Southern Fire ac-1

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Besides, you had nothing to cook. Daish Reik wouldn't be too impressed, to see your efforts at fending for yourself in the forest. What excuse would you offer him, for your hunger and thirst and weariness? That you're waiting for Telouet to bring you breakfast?

  Kheda rolled slowly over, doing his best to look like a man still asleep. The dry lilla branches he'd piled for a bed crackled softly beneath him. Slowly, he opened his eyes just enough to see through the lattice of his lashes. He was indeed being watched. A loal was looking warily at the sloping shelter of palm fronds Kheda had constructed, wide cat-like ears pricking towards him. It sat on its rump, long feathery tail curled casually to one side, a stick in its disconcertingly man-like hands for digging through the leaf litter. If it were to stand on feet more like hands than paws, it might be chest high to a man. It would be easily as strong as a man, its densely furred arms and legs quite as sturdy as Kheda's own. Its face had nothing that was human about it: a black muzzle sniffed the air, pink tongue startling as it licked the last fragments of some hapless lizard from long, white teeth. Any hound would have been proud to boast such fangs. It blinked slowly, eyes perfect circles, as dark as its woolly black-brown pelt. Concluding Kheda was either no threat or of no interest, the creature returned to digging, hunching shoulders bearing a broad white swathe of fur.

  Which is why they call you a caped loal. I had no notion you grew so big though. The Daish domain's striped loals are half your size.

  Something in the dirt caught the loal's eye and it snatched up a wriggling millipede, cramming it into its mouth and chewing with crunches audible across the clearing. Kheda cautiously propped himself on one elbow and found his belly was crying out for something to add to the shrunken hearts of a few succulent tarit stems that were all he'd been able to find before darkness had fallen. Kheda allowed himself a grin.

  Poets tell of children benighted in the forest being offered ripe fruit or tasty nuts by loals. Do you have anything you'd care to share, something without quite so many legs?

  In the nut palms and thick stands of red cane, Kheda heard glory birds rousing themselves to full song. As the sun rose to flood the gully with light, a deeper, more resonant note echoed beneath their trills. Looking up, Kheda saw more loals, smaller pied ones, like those he'd seen on hunting trips with Daish Reik. Sitting upright, they were facing the sun, arras raised and basking in the promise of warmth, crooning with pleasure.

  'There are many reasons to despise the northern barbarians, my son, not least the way they turn the sun and the moons into meaningless gods, no better than singing loals.'

  I wonder, do these southern invaders worship false gods of their own, my father?

  The ceaseless urgency of his quest drove Kheda to a sitting position. A chittering in a nut palm made Kheda and the caped loal both look up. It was a smaller beast, a female clutching a delicate infant to its chest. It sounded most indignant.

  This would be your lady wife, I take it, and none too pleased that you've not brought home her breakfast.

  Abruptly the female stopped her cries, turning her face uphill. Her tail curled up sharply, a long fringe of fur falling across her shoulder. She barked something at the male, who abandoned his stick to climb hand over hand up the nut palm, long tail lashing behind him. With startling speed, the two beasts leapt across the void to a tall ironwood tree, propelled by the spring of their powerful legs, strong hands clasping the trunk. In the next instant they were gone, lost in the dense green canopy of leaves. The pied loals had fled too, ringing silence telling its own tale. A blue-backed crookbeak raised raucous calls of alarm in a cane brake further up the slope and a brief echo relayed the unmistakable sound of a man's cough.

  Kheda reached for Telouet's sword and thrust it through his belt before crawling towards the sparse cover of a thicket of dusty sardberry bushes. He kept a wary eye on the ground, no wish to put his hand on some millipede or scorpion stirred up by the digging loal. The cough came again, cut short. Faint but deliberate, Kheda heard a crack of dry twigs and the rustle of the tightly packed red cane stems. Some hunting party was coming stealthily down the gully.

  Even if they're not hunting you, you don't want to be explaining yourself to anyone who might carry word back to Derasulla, not when you're so close to the shore, not after crossing the whole width of this cursed island.

  Wishing he had ears he could twist like a loal, Kheda skirted slowly around to put the berry bushes between himself and the sounds, searching the forest for any sign of waving greenery, any flutter of disturbed birds. The sounds of men coming nearer grew suddenly louder. Kheda rose to a crouch, turning to slip away down the gully as fast as he could, still bent to stay below a pursuer's natural eye line.

  A cry went up, then another, higher in the gully. Kheda straightened up and ran. He reached the stream, no more than a chain of puddles around green-stained rocks. The dark soggy ground sucked at his feet. He sank to his ankles, thrown off balance, reaching out for a sapling only to find its roots so shallow, he pulled it bodily from the pungent soil.

  'Want a hand?' A hunter appeared, grinning broadly. A net slung over one shoulder, he carried a sturdy spear that he levelled at Kheda. 'Come and see what I've caught,' he shouted to his companions.

  Kheda studied the mire around his feet until he saw a firm place to brace the sapling and haul himself out. By the time he'd managed, six men surrounded him. Kheda kept his face neutral, eyes downcast.

  Two of them on the wrong side of the stream and only armed with daggers; that's in your favour. You'll only have four to deal with in the first instance but two of them have spears, so better pick the right moment. What would Telouet say? 'Never start a fight until you can do it on your own terms'

  'What have you got to say for yourself?' Swinging a heavy, square-ended hacking blade, the leader of this hunting party walked slowly down the slope to stand face to face with Kheda.

  'I have nothing to say to you,' Kheda replied curtly. 'I am just a traveller.'

  The hunter's fist drove hard into Kheda's belly, just beneath his breastbone. 'You'll keep a civil tongue in your head, beggar.'

  Kheda dropped to his knees, struggling to regain his breath, unable to stop the hunter as he bent and pulled at Telouet's sword, ripping it out of Kheda's belt and scoring a gouge across his naked ribs with the end of the scabbard.

  'Beggar or thief? Nothing to your name but the clothes you stand up in and the weapons at your belt. Honest traveller would have a wrap against the night, some goods to trade or the tools of his craft.' The man whistled with approval as he tossed his own hacking blade to a companion, the better to study the sword. 'Scum like you shouldn't be carrying a blade like this neither.'

  Kheda managed to regain his feet, his side burning and his gut aching, and strove for a conciliatory tone. 'That is my sword, you have my word on it.'

  'Your master's sword, slave,' the lead hunter chided as he lifted it for a closer look. 'Gilt and silver and sapphires in the hilt besides.' He slid the scabbard a little way clear. 'And a watered steel blade. No one carries something like this outside a warlord's retinue, nor wears silks.'

  All the other hunters were dressed in coarse cottons, once dyed green, now faded from countless washings and marked with stains from innumerable hunts.

  'Silk's no good for the journey you've been making.' One of the others smirked at the rips and filth ruining Kheda's trousers.

  No, it isn't. So why didn't you find something else to wear, you fool? It's not as if you haven't seen enough clothes left out to dry on the perfume bushes around those far-flung hill settlements. Don't you think you're going to pay for those scruples now, all those worries about some innocent getting the blame, some friendship soured by suspicion?

  'We've been tracking you for a day now.' Irritated by Kheda's silence, the lead hunter shoved his shoulder to get his attention. 'Since you crossed the ridge. Lost you for a while but picked up your trail this morning.'

  Kheda glanced involuntarily up
towards the jagged heights still lost in the morning mist. 'Then you'll know I've done no harm, taken nothing but what the forest offers.'

  'You're still a fleeing slave,' sneered one of the men, leaning on his spear.

  'Daish slave, I see now.' The leader nodded at Kheda's curved dagger.

  Kheda couldn't help himself. His spine stiffened, shoulders squaring defiantly.

  'See him jump like a startled fowl,' another hunter commented with warm satisfaction.

  'That dagger's a fine piece.' The leader swung Telouet's sword idly. 'That'll tell us whose household you've fled, once we show it to someone in the know. Then I think it'll make a fine price for bringing you back, don't you, lads?'

  And as soon as Ulla Safar gets wind of this, he'll send an army through the island to find the man Daish Kheda's dagger has been taken from, dead or alive.

  'I am no runaway,' Kheda said quietly.

  'They're saying Daish Kheda is dead, drowned no less.' The leader leant forward, breath stale, hair and beard long unwashed. 'You've made a break for it, haven't you, out to get well clear before any new warlord is proclaimed?'

  Kheda shook his head but his heart sank.

  Of course. Ulla Safar will be spreading the news as widely as possible, thrilled to see anyone trying to take advantage of a Daish interregnum, all the while shaking his head with dismay. And slaves always go missing whenever a warlord dies, sometimes in droves. Sirket has no legal title to anything until he's proclaimed himself ruler and decreed inventory of the domain be taken. Ulla Safar will be more than happy for Daish losses to pile up in the interim. You didn't think to consider such possibilities, while you were crossing the highlands, admiring the scenery?

  'Nothing to say?' the leader mocked, still swinging Telouet's sword. 'Run out of lies?'

  'Do we take him back to Derasulla?' asked the hunter who'd taken the hacking blade.

  'That's a hard route overland,' one of the others said doubtfully. 'Eight, nine days at best.'

  'Body slave, swordsman, whoever he is, he'll be worth his weight in silk or sandalwood,' the leader rebuked him. 'But who will deal more honestly with us, Ulla Safar or Ulla Orhan?' He looked round for opinions.

  If they think taking me back is going to be so simple, these men plainly have no idea how a body slave is trained to fight. Nor yet how a warlord's son is taught to escape assassins.

  Kheda punched the lead hunter full in the throat with a sweeping uppercut. The man staggered backwards, pulled up short as Kheda dropped into a crouch, snatching Telouet's sword from his numb hands. The warlord drew it in the same fluid movement, the glittering arc of steel sending the second hunter recoiling in fear. A deft sidestep took Kheda out of the path of the man's clumsy swing with the hacking blade and a full-blooded kick in his belly shoved the choking leader full into the second hunter. Both fell heavily with a crack of bone that left the man beneath yelping in sudden agony.

  The hunter with the closest spear swung his net at Kheda, weights around its edge whistling through the air. Kheda stepped forward to catch the clinging cords full around his midriff, stiffening his belly to save himself from being winded. The net bruised the raw score on his ribs but ignoring the pain, he used the whole weight of his body to pull the hunter forward on to the point of Telouet's sword, ripping into his shoulder. He knocked the man's spear aside with the scabbard in his other hand, before punching upwards, fist weighted with that same scabbard, to smash the hunter's nose to bloody pulp.

  As the man fell to his knees, clutching at his face, Kheda whirled around to catch the second spearman's biting blade between sword hilt and scabbard, shoving the weapon backwards to throw the startled man off balance.

  As the spearman recovered himself, Kheda raised Telouet's sword menacingly. 'I am just a traveller and you have no call to hinder me.' He shot a threatening glance at the men on the far side of the stream. Both were gaping, one with a hand on the dagger at his belt but his face making it plain he didn't fancy his chances against this unexpected warrior. The other already had both hands raised in abject surrender.

  'Then I'll be on my way.' Kheda kept Telouet's sword levelled as he tore away the clinging net. No one made a move towards him. The leader of the hunting party was still sprawled on the ground, struggling to draw breath, clawing at his injured throat. The second man cowered beside him; face wretched with fear and pain as he cradled a foot twisted at an excruciating angle.

  'Go and may your journey be cursed,' the second spearman snarled, on his knees beside his companion. He wadded a filthy rag frantically into the wound gaping in the man's shoulder, blood already soaking the cloth slippery beneath his fingers. The injured man whimpered, tears and slime running through his fingers as he clutched at his broken nose.

  'Follow me again and I'll kill you,' Kheda said with all the menace he could muster. 'All of you.'

  He backed away through a spindly thicket of sardberry bushes, barely glancing over his shoulder to see what lay in his path. An impenetrable stand of wrist-thick red cane finally halted him. Pausing, he listened to the hunters' urgent shouts of argument and lamentation ringing loudly through the forest. There was no obvious sound of pursuit. Turning, Kheda ran, twisting between nut palm saplings tangled with logen vine, his immediate concern to put as much distance between himself and the hunters as he could.

  Not down the gully; if they try tracking you, revenge in mind, that's where they'll look first. What will you do then? Kill them in all truth? You've probably killed their leader as it is, crushing his windpipe like that. That shoulder wound will likely fester and it's too high up to save the hapless bastard by taking off his arm, if the black rot gets into it. What did they do to deserve that, only seeking to do their duty by their lord and Daish Sirket, returning a runaway slave?

  Sour bile rising from his empty stomach like acid remorse, Kheda pushed on through the lightest patches of underbrush, trying not to slide too far down the hill. He slashed furiously at tendrils of firecreeper, at frail tandra saplings, with Telouet's bloodied sword. Finally, he broke through to a narrow, overgrown track. Sweat stinging the countless scratches he'd collected in his flight, Kheda stopped, heart pounding. With all the birds and animals fled from the noise he'd made or crouching in silent hiding, the forest was tense with stillness. He counted ten deliberate breaths. There was still no sound of pursuit.

  And you'd have been easy enough to follow, noisy as a raging fire. So much for all Daish Reik's lessons in stealth and forest craftiness. Now then, get yourself in hand. Where are you in relation to the shore, to the trading beach you've been making for? Getting clear of this domain is more essential than ever now, preferably before half that hunting party's village come looking to nail your hide to a tree.

  Kheda walked slowly down the tortuous path, berating himself. The forest stretched out ahead of him, all around, ever changing, always the same. The morning wore away beneath his feet. Only thirst finally put paid to his recriminations, its stranglehold tightening around his throat. Belatedly recalling one of Daish Reik's lessons, he left the path to find a bristled creeper snaking up an ironwood tree. Mindful of Agas's laughter when he'd got this trick wrong as a youth, he made his first cut as high as he could, slicing an arm's length of the dun creeper free with a second lower slash of Telouet's blade. The plant's jealously hoarded water gushed free and splashed over his face as he caught all he could in his gaping mouth, stale and woody tasting as it was.

  And I wouldn't trade it for the promise of a dozen flagons of the finest golden wine.

  He threw the length of cut creeper aside and such idle thoughts evaporated as he glimpsed a yellowing square of old palm fronds bright through the muted green of the living trees, some little way down the slope. Moving cautiously forward, as quietly as he could, Kheda saw it was indeed what he'd guessed; the roof of a hut, ramshackle and in need of considerable repair if the imminent rains weren't to soak anyone within as they lay in their beds. The ground all around showed more recent care though, newly
dug with black earth piled high along trenches waiting impatiently to capture all the precious water that the tardy rains would bring. Kheda left the path and circled round the edge of the dusty barrenness where the underbrush had long since been taken for firewood.

  Long since, but none too recently. Those sardberry bushes have a good few seasons' growth on them. There's no fowl house either, ducks or geese ready to raise a commotion if strangers come too close to a hut outside the more usual protections of a village.

  Behind the sparse cover of a withered perfume bush, he hunkered down to see inside the decrepit hut's splintered shutters, hanging crooked on sagging hinges. From his vantage point, Kheda could clearly see a heap of quilts were tossed all anyhow on a narrow bed. A tumble of clothes lay on the floor, together with a single lidded cooking pot and a half-unrolled length of sturdy cotton, such as any Daish islander might use to gather up a few belongings for a short journey.

  Who's making a stay here? Someone not wanting to live in such an isolated hut for the present but still making use of the fertile garden until the forest reclaims it. But where might this diligent farmer be now'! Out foraging or squatting over a privy scrape?

  Kheda crept closer, the skin between his shoulder blades crawling with apprehension lest the unknown gardener return. He sheathed Telouet's sword with sudden decision, driving the hilt home with a snap. Swinging himself over the low sill of the window, he grabbed the topmost quilt and a leather thong left curling across the floor. Seeing a sweat-stained tunic, he pulled it over his head, grimacing with distaste as he fought his arms through the sleeves. Cut for a taller and fatter man, it would at least help hide his own ragged trousers from a casual glance.

  Going bare-chested on to a trading beach will attract entirely too much attention and I think we've had more than enough of that this morning. So what else is there, to make you look more convincing as a traveller? You can't afford scruples, not now.

  Kheda knelt and made a rapid roll of the quilt, lashing it tight. His stomach rumbled, startlingly loud in the quiet gloom. He lifted the lid off the cooking pot to find a cold smear of sailer pottage, the grain long since cooked and mixed with crushed tandra seeds, some pepper pods and salt to keep it from spoiling. Lilla fruit rinds had been dumped on top of it. After a moment's hesitation, Kheda fished out the rinds and scraped the greasy remnants out of the bottom of the pot, spitting out fragments of lilla pulp and choking the humble food down over his first instinctive revulsion.