Exile's Children

by Angus Wells

  Colun snorted then, irritably, and asked, “Think you these Breakers shall make such fine distinctions when they come back to scour these hills? What shall you do then? Go to them crying, ‘I am not of the People. Leave me be?’ I think they’ll not care much who or what you are, but only slay you and your bride. I’d thought Racharran’s son made of better stuff.”

  Rannach scowled and Arrhyna tightened her grip on his hand, fearing he’d take such offense as to strike at the Grannach.

  “Soft, soft.” Morrhyn spoke again, his narrowed hands gesturing placation. “Shall we friends fall to quarreling and disagreement like all the rest? Are we no better than Chakthi, or those others who pretend there’s naught amiss?”

  He looked from one to another, his eyes lit with such inner fire as to still them all. Arrhyna thought she saw the Maker looking out from those orbs—how else could Morrhyn know she was pregnant, save all his dreams were true? And if they were all true … Again she felt those chill fingers trail her spine, tingle over her heart.

  Rannach met Morrhyn’s gaze awhile, then lowered his eyes. “Tell me what it is I should see,” he said, his voice gruff with confused emotions. “I am only a plain man, a simple warrior. I do not see these things so clear.”

  “The Ahsa-tye-Patiko is more than just a set of rules,” Morrhyn said, his voice soft but yet seeming to ring loud as any clarion. “It is our covenant with the Maker, the thing that binds us to him and him to us. And it stands broken, forgotten or ignored by many. Thus are those wards he set about our land weakened, and the Breakers able to come through.”

  Rannach frowned. “You say the sins of men deliver this scourge?”

  “Yes.” Morrhyn nodded solemnly. “The Maker forgives much, but when men forsake the covenant of the Will … Why should he remember us when we forget him? Listen—Chakthi’s was the first sin, that he was akaman of the Tachyn but still agreed to Arrhyna’s kidnap. No less Hadduth’s, for he was wakanisha and should have dissuaded Chakthi from that course … ”

  “Ach, dissuade Chakthi?” Rannach waved a scornful hand. “He’s as likely to try dissuading Chakthi as attempt to milk a bull buffalo.”

  “And so perhaps his sin is the greater,” Morrhyn said. “For it was Hadduth’s charge to define and interpret the Will, and he did not. Like Chakthi, he turned his face from the Maker in pursuit of only human profit: that was the second sin. And then—the third—Vachyr took Arrhyna, which was a sure breaking of the Ahsa-tye-Patiko.”

  “And I slew Vachyr.” Rannach’s voice was defiant, his eyes no less so. “I slew him within the aegis of the Meeting Ground.”

  Morrhyn said, “Yes,” looking directly at Rannach. “That was the fifth sin.”

  Rannach said, “The fifth? Surely the fourth, if it was a sin—he gave me no other choice.”

  Morrhyn said, “Did he not? Truly?”

  Rannach hesitated. Arrhyna drew in a deep and frightened breath, clutching his hand hard. Morrhyn knew all that had transpired: she saw it in his eyes, all fiery with the dreams the Maker had sent him. She summoned up her courage and said, “I urged Rannach to kill him. I told him what Vachyr had done and told Rannach to slay him for it. So is there sin to be apportioned here, then I must take my share.”

  Rannach said, “No! What sin there is is mine alone. I chose to slay Vachyr; I was mad with rage. Leave Arrhyna out of this.”

  Morrhyn said, “I cannot. She’s of the People, as are you. You are both the Maker’s children, parts of his creation and so bound by his Will. Arrhyna’s was the fourth sin, that she urged you to the fifth.”

  “Then are we guilty as Chakthi?” Rannach asked defiantly. “Guilty as Vachyr and Hadduth?”

  “No.” Morrhyn shook his head and stretched out his lips in a wan smile. “Your sins were those of reaction, not commission. And you suffered banishment, by agreement of all the Council.”

  “Then what is all this about?” Rannach demanded.

  “Atonement. And the saving of the People. Forgiveness; salvation, all well.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “I must go back to Ket-Ta-Witko,” Morrhyn said.

  Soft, somehow knowing what should come next, Arrhyna gasped, “No!”

  Morrhyn smiled at her—gently, apologetically—and said, “This is a hard duty, but I’ve no other way, no other choice.”

  “Rannach cannot go back,” she said. “On pain of death, he cannot! They’ll execute him, does he go back.”

  “Why should I?” Rannach asked.

  “Because I must,” Morrhyn answered. “And because you love the People. Because you are a brave, good man. Because I need you.”

  Arrhyna said again louder, “No!”

  “I’ll willingly gift you a horse; two,” Rannach said. “But go back? That’s my death. Even my father would command it.”

  “Not with the word I bring,” Morrhyn said. “The word I must bring, else all the People fall to the Breakers. And the last of the Grannach, and all the worlds beyond, unending until nothing is left save destruction and ruin and chaos, and all the Maker’s works brought down and only sad, dark night left ruling.”

  Rannach sat openmouthed, his eyes haunted. “So bad? Truly?”

  “Truly.”

  Arrhyna, all cold now, said, “Must it be Rannach? Why not …” She looked, ashamed, at Colun.

  Morrhyn smiled sadly and said, “The Stone Folk saved me when I might have died in the snow, and they’ve fought battles enough with the Breakers and have their own wounds to tend. They’ve done their share, with more to come. Now I need someone who can ride hard and bring me safe to the People. The Grannach do not ride—I’ve no other choice but to ask Rannach.” His sad smile went away, only remorse left behind. “Could it be otherwise … ”

  Arrhyna closed her eyes tight against the tears that threatened, and in that self-willed darkness heard Morrhyn add, “But there’s a thing he should know before he chooses. Shall you tell him, or I?”

  She opened her eyes to face that future she had sensed approached since first Morrhyn embraced her, and she knew he saw her as only a wakanisha could. Almost, she hated him for that knowledge, but not quite. How could she, when in his burning eyes she saw only unwelcomed truths and the pain that seared him for what he knew, and knew he must do?

  She heard Rannach say, “Tell me what?” and turned her face to her husband.

  “I carry your child,” she said.

  Rannach’s jaw dropped. His expression was comical enough that Arrhyna almost laughed: would have, had other and weightier matters not pressed her lips tight together. Then Marjia said, “Why are men always so surprised?” And she could not help but chuckle.

  Rannach asked, “A boy or a girl?”

  Which seemed to Arrhyna so foolish, she began to giggle, and say, “How can I tell?”

  But Morrhyn said, “A boy. A fine and healthy boy.”

  And all the laughter ceased as they looked to the Dreamer, who essayed an almost shamefaced smile and shrugged, saying, “I saw it in my dreams. It’s a boy, who—”

  He broke off, his smile disappearing.

  Arrhyna said, “What? Tell me, Morrhyn.”

  The wakanisha licked his lips nervously, and ran a hand over his gaunt face and said, “There are threads to dreams, like all the threads that weave out a blanket. Some go one way, some another; others are broken … ”

  Arrhyna felt the fingers again, dancing chilly down her spine, as if all the possible futures plucked at her. She reached slowly for the kettle, filling her own cup and then passing the receptacle on. Bad manners, she knew, but knew she had no time now for manners, only the terrible dread urgency that filled her. She voiced a question even as she felt convinced she knew the answer, as if she owned the powers of a Dreamer.

  “Does Rannach not go?”

  Morrhyn took a cup and sipped, then he looked her sadly in the eye and said, “It must be his choice. I cannot say.”

  She drank tea and felt an emptiness open inside her. Sh
e said, “That’s no choice, is it?”

  He shrugged. “There are always choices.”

  “Poor choices sometimes,” she said. “And sometimes no choice at all.”

  Rannach looked from one to the other, confused, and asked, “What do you say?”

  Arrhyna tore her eyes from Morrhyn’s solemn gaze and turned to face her husband. “The horses are healthy, no?”

  Rannach nodded.

  “And there’s a deer to butcher?”

  Rannach said, “Yes, you saw it.”

  She nodded. “You’ll need meat, are you to travel fast.”

  “I’ve not agreed to go yet,” Rannach began.

  “If you do not, then our child will die. Likely I shall too. And you, and all the People. Is that not right, Morrhyn?”

  Morrhyn nodded. “That’s one trail the future takes.”

  Arrhyna could not understand how she was able to speak so firm, so clear. “Rannach, do you go ready that deer. You’d best leave soon.”

  He said, “And leave you alone? With child?”

  Marjia said, “She’ll not be alone. She’ll be with us.”

  Rannach hesitated.

  Arrhyna said, “Go, husband. I’ll be safe with our friends. Safer than if you remain.”

  Rannach frowned, staring at her, and she took hold of both his hands and smiled as best and warmly as she could and said, “There’s no other choice. I wish there were, but there’s not. So go and do as Morrhyn bids you, then come back safe.”

  For a while he only stared at her, reading the truth in her eyes. Then he swallowed hard and ducked his head and kissed her, and went out from the tent to butcher the deer.

  Racharran took only five of his most reliable warriors with him, men proven in battle who would not panic or run at the sight of what he feared they’d encounter. All well, he hoped they would spot the strangelings only at a distance—locate the placement of their forces and assess their strength that he have some clearer idea what the People faced—then come back safe with such information. That was what he hoped, and what he told Lhyn would happen as she held him tight and fought back tears, but they both knew that hope was one thing and reality another.

  He was no Dreamer that he could foresee the future, but he could not forget Bakaan’s wounds or the dying warrior’s words, which seemed clear portent of things to come. He wished Morrhyn were there to advise him—he felt he became akaman and wakanisha both, and that was a terrible weight to carry. But he put on a brave face and led his little party out from the canyon across the snow fields, in the direction of the catfish river Bakaan had described.

  The snow was hard frozen and relatively easy to travel. The White Grass Moon waned, and with its going the snowfalls ceased, replaced by only bitter cold and winds that cut to the bone. Icicles hung glittering in the watery sunlight from trees that thrust out naked branches like the clutching fingers of nightmares. Rivers and streams were locked beneath thick crusts of ice, their water black as night and cold as death’s kiss beneath. There was little game: deer sought the shelter of the woodlands, and the few buffalo herds they saw huddled disconsolate in closepacked, defensive groups where trees or terrain afforded some shelter. It was not a time to travel. That, at least, was some consolation, for Racharran thought not even crazed Chakthi could persuade his warriors out from their Wintering Ground in such harsh weather.

  He led his men on. All wore furs—bear, buffalo, and wolf—with more for the horses, and blankets and skins for shelter at night when men and animals both might freeze to death. They each carried a lance and a bow, spare strings and quivers filled with arrows tipped with sharp Grannach steel; also knives and tinder and packs of dried meat, and fodder for the horses—the equipment of a raiding party. They wore no paint, but each man daubed his eyes with black against the snowblindness; and all rode cautious, as if they were out raiding.

  They came to the catfish river and walked their mounts over the ice to the oakwood beyond. So far they had seen no sign of the invaders. They camped inside the wood and chanced a fire. Racharran calculated the timber should hide the smoke, and without that heat they might well die. Before the light went, he checked the forest trails for spoor, but found only trunks scratched deep and high, as if lions had tested their claws against the wood. The score marks were level with his head as he sat his horse, and he guessed them made by the beasts Bakaan had described. He marveled at their size, and wondered if such creatures might be slain.

  The forest was a day and half’s ride across. It would likely have been swifter to skirt around, but the trees afforded shelter from the relentless wind and cover from unwelcome observation. It ended on the rim of a wide and shallow valley edged on its farther side with broken hills, drumlins that scattered in a hundred directions, the gulches between all wide and deep enough to hide a raiding party.

  On the far side of those breaks, where the land flattened again to a broad plain dotted with stands of winter-bared trees, they saw their quarry.

  Bylas was out ahead, and came cantering back with his lance held up horizontal in sign of warning. Racharran halted the rest in the shelter of a low ridge.

  “The Maker blind me if I lie,” Bylas said even as he dragged his horse to a panting stop, “but I’ve never seen such creatures. They’re all Bakaan described and worse.” He shaped a sign of warding.

  Racharran asked, “How far away?”

  “Just out of bowshot,” Bylas said. “Out on the flat where the stream turns past a wood. They’re hunting buffalo. No!” He shook his head and spat onto the frozen snow. “Not hunting—slaughtering. Ach, I’ve not seen the like of it.”

  His eyes were wide and his face drawn. Racharran knew him for a phlegmatic man, not given to excitement or fear: now he looked horrified.

  “Wait here.” Racharran passed his rein to Bylas and swung to the ground. “You others, come with me. Bylas has seen them—I’d have us all witnesses.”

  Bylas said, “Carefully, eh?”

  Racharran nodded and drove his lance into the ground, then took up his bow and looked to his companions. “We only watch, you understand? Not fight, save they attack.”

  Bylas muttered, “The Maker grant they don’t.”

  “The wind’s in our favor,” Racharran said more confidently than he felt.

  “What if … ?” asked Bishi, and had no need to end the sentence.

  “We run,” Racharran said. “We are watchers now. We need only to know their strength and what they are, and bring that word back to the clan and all the People.”

  “But if they see us or scent us,” Zhonne asked, “and attack?”

  Again Racharran said, “We run. This is not war with the Tachyn—brothers though we be, we do not go back for any fallen. We run, that some, at least, live to take back the word.”

  “That is not our way,” said Lonah. “To leave a fallen brother?”

  “I think,” Racharran said, “that these are not such enemies as we’ve ever faced. I believe it our duty to warn all of the People, and to do that we must survive.”

  “And if you fall?” asked Motsos. “Are we to leave you?”

  Racharran said, “Yes,” and stabbed a finger at each of them in turn. “I charge you with this duty—that no matter what happens here, you will endeavor to go back. Not look to save a fallen brother or boast your prowess, but only take back word of what these creatures are, and the threat they are, to the Commacht and all of the People. Do you swear to this?”

  They liked this not at all, but one by one, under the ferocity of his gaze, they agreed.

  “Then let us go,” Racharran said, more cheerfully than he felt, “and see what Bylas has seen.”

  “You’ll not enjoy it,” Bylas said, nor did they. The buffalo were in a small draw—a herd of thirty or so, half that number already dead, their bloodsmell panicking the rest so that they milled about and charged uselessly up the ridges or toward the entrance. Racharran could not decide which he found the more disgusting—the creatures th
at attacked or the creatures that paced the rims and the entrance. The latter he supposed men: they wore the shapes of men, the heads and arms and legs all encased in bright armor that shone and glittered and tricked the eye so that it was just as Bakaan had told him. They were hard to see, to define, and they carried swords and lances that seemed possessed of their own power, so that when only a single strangeling sprang out before the terrified buffalo brandishing his weapon, the beasts snorted and turned away, driven back toward the other predators.

  And those were no less horrifying than Bakaan had said—each big as a buffalo bull, but not such creatures as Racharran had ever seen. They ran on wide and padded feet that sprouted claws large as daggers, and their bodies were fur and scales combined, with lashing tails like those of rats. They had massive shoulders and heavy heads, sharp-eared and longly jawed, with savage fangs and hot red eyes. They seemed to Racharran abominations, as if different and unrelated creatures were joined in horrid amalgamation. And their appearance was matched, even surpassed, by their bloodlust—Racharran must hold himself back from crying out at what they did to the buffalo.

  The People hunted the buffalo. Like the Matawaye, they were part of life’s circle, creations of the Maker, set down in Ket-Ta-Witko that they might multiply and grant their bounty to the People. Their skins made robes and tents, their bones implements and glue, the sinews cords. All was designated within the Ahsa-tye-Patiko, and the People took no more from the herds than met their needs: that was the Maker’s Will.

  This was not. This was wanton slaughter, neither for meat nor shelter but only for lust of killing, of destruction. The strangeling beasts clawed and bit and roared as the buffalo bellowed in terror and pain, and stumbled in the tanglings of their own entrails. Racharran saw a cow brought down and gutted and left kicking behind; a bull tossing helpless horns and running as two of the beasts mounted its back and chewed away its spine, and then left it to course and gut another. A yearling died at a single bite.

  It was all he could do not to flight arrows against them. But he fought that impulse and made himself still and watched, even as bile rose in his throat and he felt such hatred as he had never felt, not even against Chakthi. He heard a sound and turned to see Lonah spitting vomit. At his side, Bishi thrust a finger between his teeth and bit down, that he not cry out in disgust. Zhonne and Motsos lay white-faced as the snow under them.