The Desert and the Blade

by S. M. Stirling

  “At first I thought this was a horimono,” Reiko said, her finger tracing the curve of the blade without quite touching it.

  The word meant carving, literally, and referred to engraving and inlay work done on some Nihonto swords. This looked much like the Masamune masterpiece Reiko had inherited from her father and borne into the hidden castle, but a second glance showed the differences. It was a little broader, a little longer—perhaps thirty inches or a fraction more. A shape writhed down the blade for three-quarters of its length, as if the steel had been chiseled and then inlaid with the thinnest film of burnished gold, and the tsuka-ito silk cords binding the wood and ray-skin of the hilt were of a deep yellow instead of black. The inlay on the blade was an abstract pattern, seeming at one moment to be curling leaves of fire, another an elongated form dancing, then nothing that human eyes could interpret at all. When you looked more closely you could tell . . . somehow . . . that it was not gold in the form of flame. It was flame, in some entirely non-physical way.

  “I feel . . . potential,” Reiko said seriously, sheathing the sword and laying it before her as she sat cross-legged with her hands on her thighs, contemplating it. “When I touch it. Images form, things which cannot be said in words . . . though it does not seem to teach me languages!”

  “I’m not surprised,” Órlaith said.

  This was one of a triad of sacred treasures, after all.

  “Yes, that would be the Yato na Kagami, The Eight Hand Mirror,” Reiko said. “But that is another task.”

  Órlaith extended a hand towards the sheathed blade, and Reiko tensed slightly as she spread her fingers over it. And . . .

  “No, that wouldn’t be advisable at all, now would it?” Órlaith said, withdrawing her hand and working the fingers to get the warning tingling out of them; they were still speaking in Reiko’s language, for privacy. “Just as I expected. These are not my mysteries.”

  “Hai,” Reiko said.

  As so often the simple word carried a freight of meanings; softly she murmured:

  “I have accomplished the task fate set us and your visions saw. Be at peace, Father.”

  Even the scabbard seemed different now. It was still a lacquered black . . . but there were flecks of gold in it, as in a vast translucent space. And they moved, very slowly, so slowly that you couldn’t be quite sure . . . possibly they moved, or she was seeing great depths . . .

  Reiko began a halting account of what had happened. It was skeletal; as much because there was really no way to describe the experiences to another as anything else, but there was reluctance there as well. Órlaith nodded. The spiral of recurring horrors she described was well out of the world. Better off dead was a phrase used far more often than it should be, but there were some occasions it was precisely true.

  Órlaith made a seated bow of acknowledgment and sober respect when the story ended with the flight out of the burning castle. She ducked her head slightly before she spoke:

  “Omedetou . . . omedetou gozaimasu! Yoku dekimashita! Congratulations! Very well done indeed!”

  Reiko returned the gesture, then frowned. “I was there a whole day, you say? It seemed more as if it were an hour, two at the most, to me.”

  “We both know time is mutable; it can be warped and turned upon itself. And you were very right, my friend. That which you bear now is perilous. Perilous beyond common conception. I’m glad that place was purified by fire, and that an end was made of what began so long ago. Let Cody Biltmore and all his find peace too.”

  Then Órlaith glanced at the girl lying sleeping with an arm over her eyes and mouth open and raised an eyebrow. “Not quite all,” she corrected herself.

  The Nihonjin tilted her head. “I found I could not leave her. Not leave her to burn; still less if she did not. It was . . . it was a very bad place,” Reiko said seriously. “Saving her . . . closed a cycle. Her . . . ancestor, I do not know how many times removed . . . did that which he should not, and it cascaded through the years. Perhaps if I do what I should, it will likewise—but in a fortunate direction.”

  Órlaith nodded approvingly. “Threefold return for good or ill, is the way we put it,” she said.

  Reiko smiled wryly. “Though honestly I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m going to do with her. She doesn’t seem to be evil or an imbecile. Quite intelligent, in fact, and she has learned some speech, even picked up a few Nihongo words in the last day, but she has no more conception of how to be a human being than a dog does. Less. One that has to be housebroken. And now she doesn’t like to be separated from me, which is awkward.”

  “I’m not surprised, though,” Órlaith said. “What’s her name?”

  “As far as I can tell, she has none,” Reiko said. “She was very startled to see men, and even more to see children when we arrived here. I do not think she ever knew her father; he must have died not long after she was born . . . or even before it, and she has no understanding of the word. Probably she had never seen a male before yesterday. And other children surprised her as well, and frightened her; she has no idea that children grow into adults, perhaps, and imagined herself a being of a completely different sort, the only one in the world. I do not really like to imagine what her life has been, though her mother seems to have protected her as much as she could while she lived.”

  “She’s young enough to forget,” Órlaith said. “What do you or I remember of our first or second years? Perhaps she was on the borderline for that, though.”

  “Ah!” Reiko said. “Excellent! I will call her Kiwako.”

  Órlaith chuckled and nodded; that meant born on a border. “For that she was also born on the borderline between the world of common day and the Otherworld, as well,” she said.

  “Hai, honto desu,” Reiko said thoughtfully.

  “Not Kitsune, though?” Órlaith teased; that was the Nihongo for fox . . . or for the fox spirits that scampered and shimmered changefully through their folklore.

  Reiko shook her head. “No, though she will be called that by any Nihonjin children she meets. Best not to encourage it, though, teasing can be painful enough anyway.”

  “And now it’s time to see our hosts,” Órlaith said.

  “Indeed. Most of them speak English, but it must be a dialect form; I have trouble understanding them. They are not hostile, but . . . stiff . . . around me. I do not think they know what to make of us. I would be surprised if they are not arguing sharply over what we are and what to do with us.”

  Órlaith nodded. “They seem to speak Ivrit for everyday . . . Hebrew . . . as they do in Degania Dalet . . . that’s a clutch of villages near Eugene, a little federation of its own.”

  Reiko frowned. “Hebrew? Isn’t that a tongue part of the Christian bible is written in?” she said.

  As she spoke she reassembled the Honjo Masamune and wrapped it in a long length of cloth, then bound it with cord. It needed the protection . . . and Kiwako was of an age entirely unsafe around something so very, very sharp.

  Órlaith chuckled. “It’s a bit more complex than that, and I wouldn’t use exactly that phrasing with them, it might be misinterpreted.”

  She rose, straightened her kilt and beat a little dust out of it, then combed her hair before tying it back; everything was no worse than you’d expect, and at least a good stout comb was always there in the sporran. There were two men standing guard at the entrance to the tent, where a long flap on poles created an area of shade before the entrance, paved with smooth stones. One was leaning on a lance with a round hide shield on his arm marked by the two interlocking triangles of the Mogen David.

  The other she recognized as Meshek ben-Raanan; he had a bola hanging from his belt beside his curved slashing-sword and a bow in his hand and quiver across his back. It was a little odd that a seren, a captain, was standing outside her tent . . . but then again, if they recognized that she was who she claimed to be, pe
rhaps not.

  They both wore cuirasses of some supple but grain-surfaced brownish-gray leather that looked light and tough, reinforced by strips of carefully browned steel riveted on at vulnerable points, though they had folded and pinned head-cloths rather than helms, with tails that could be drawn across the face.

  “Peace be upon you,” she said to them when they turned to look at her. “We’d like to consult with your leader or leaders, please. It’s a matter of some urgency.”

  They looked at each other; they still seemed a little disconcerted that she spoke their language without an accent. Meshek bowed slightly and touched his forehead and lips and heart with his right hand in a graceful gesture.

  “And upon you, peace, nisicah. I shall see what can be done, and return here. My brother Dov will stay with you.”

  Dov nodded and grunted; he seemed the silent sort, and two or three years younger than his brother, nearer her own age. His name meant Bear, and he looked a bit like one, being thicker-built than was common here, with an abundant fuzzy black beard growing up his cheeks. His brother hurried off with the rolling gait of someone who spent a lot of the time in the saddle, towards a much larger tent, one flying a flag with the Shield of David in its center, blue on white and flanked by more stripes of blue. That bit about Dov had been a hint to stay put until they figured out what to do with two very unexpected guests. And a courteous hint, which went with the fact that no attempt had been made to disarm them.

  Moishe Feldman has helped me yet again; I think that token made a real difference. Hmmm. Moishe is truly an asset to the realm; he deserves reward . . . he’s the type you reward with opportunities, I think. And the realm needs me to give him more work, for that he does it so well. I’ll need able ministers . . . I’ll have to think on that.

  She used the wait to look about at the camp. It was located on a benchland with a good view of a broad desert valley, not quite so skeletally arid as that around the lost castle, with spindly-armed Joshua trees and a temperature that was merely very hot showing that they were at a considerably higher elevation too. Green creosote bush and gray-green burro sage and cholla cactus surrounded them with the white-gray soil showing between them, and faded into a dun-colored distance broken by rocky blue hills. A dry riverbed ran down the center of it, marked by denser vegetation including mesquite trees, and a dozen busy pairs of hands were erecting a wind-pump there on a stone base that looked permanent.

  As she watched, the metal vanes began to spin around in the hot breeze and spill water into troughs and a tank atop a wagon. Herders controlled a few horses and cattle, large flocks of goats and sheep, and what appeared to be substantial blocks of domesticated antelope, probably gemsbok, farther out. They would need the water less.

  “How do you make the antelope so tame?” she asked curiously; they were moving slowly, with mounted herders chivvying them along, but without any of the panic flight a wild herd would have shown.

  Dov blinked and thought. “If they run, eat them. If they fight, eat them. If they don’t, breed them,” he said, and went back to leaning on his lance.

  She supposed that would work, if you kept it up long enough; it was good practical genetics. More herds waited their turn, and flocks of some very large flightless bird, brownish creatures that stood man-tall; as each group was watered, it was led off to a corral of stone posts and salvaged barbed wire where it could be guarded against predators in the night.

  No, not ostriches, emu, she thought, looking at the birds; both were common throughout the warmer, drier parts of the kingdom.

  One of the emu made a break for it, running very fast indeed. A herder whirled something around his head, unclear at this distance but almost certainly a bola, an arrangement of three weights at the end of linked cords. He cast, and an instant later the emu went over in a thud that raised a puff of dust, the cords wrapped tightly around its legs by the centrifugal action of the weights.

  The camels were mostly in the middle distance; apparently it wasn’t considered wise to try to water them with the rest of the livestock, something she agreed with from brief acquaintance with the quarrelsome beasts.

  They have about the same disposition as seagulls, but they’re a good deal bigger and smell much worse, she thought. Or perhaps Son of a Whore isn’t typical.

  There were about thirty tents in the whole camp, mostly modestly sized. Apparently they’d been set up recently; a few more were being erected as she watched, chores being done on the order of releasing chickens from traveling cages into wicker pens, and there were a dozen big six-wheeled wagons parked herringbone fashion as well as smaller vehicles. A quick experienced eye estimated the people at about ten-score, better than a third of them children below the age of puberty, which was typical of most places.

  Every adult was armed at least with a long curved knife, and many carried swords at their belts as well unless they were doing something that made it severely inconvenient, broad-bladed and sharp-curved slashing weapons. Racks before each family tent held bows made from two shaped Oryx horns joined by a carved riser of mesquite root, quivers, long slender lances, slings, bolas, helmets, light armor and shields, all prudently secured against toddlers. There was a pleasant buzz of conversation, often accompanied by lively gestures, punctuated by occasional yelling which often dissolved in laughter. Though Órlaith and Reiko attracted plenty of curious looks and she knew they were being discussed, even the children kept their distance. Or were herded away by elder siblings, in some cases.

  This isn’t the first time they’ve been here. Those firepits are well kept but they’ve been there a good long while, the tents are all pitched on a rammed earth pad—

  She craned her head to check; yes, each was edged with a fieldstone border too.

  —and have a cobbled area in front, and those adobe sheds down nearer the well are in good condition but at least a decade old and the sheet-metal roofing was salvaged from somewhere else. At a guess they have a regular route they follow with the seasons, or several, to rest and stretch the pastures, and access things like date groves around springs. A moveable village, so it is.

  The people of it were ordinary enough folk, work-worn but well-fed and tough-looking. And many had something of a family resemblance, strong-boned narrow faces with full lips, olive-skinned naturally and brown where the sun struck; mostly black or brown-haired, with a minority of blonds and the occasional frizzy redhead. Men wore a cloth headdress that fell to their shoulders over shaggy hair sometimes caught up in a bun, baggy pantaloons tucked into their boots, shirts and a loose belted calf-length robe divided for riding. Women either had the same basic clothing, or sometimes long dresses and shawls, and tended to brighter colors and jewelry. All the men she could see wore beards if they were old enough, and women past their early teens had long hair covered in a snood-like arrangement often bound with a chain of ornaments.

  And . . . wait a minute! she thought. That cord binding the headdress . . .

  It was leather, wrapped twice around the head just above the brows and secured with a slip-knot, the ends dangling down on the right side. She glanced over at Dov ben-Raanan, and confirmed her suspicions; there was a loop on one end of the cord, a tab on the other, and a soft leather pocket in the middle. It was a sling, and it could be stripped off and into use with a single motion. Some of the women wore it too, around the head and then looped around their snoods.

  “Would you be using lead shot for the slings?” she asked Dov, and tapped her right temple to show what she meant.

  He looked at her, blinked again, then said: “Lead or ball-bearings for serious work, nisicah. Stones for hunting.”

  “Now wearing them so is clever indeed,” she said, and got a wordless, embarrassed grunt in reply; his seemed to be a voluble people, but Dov was obviously an exception.

  Another wagon arrived while she watched, pulled by eight camels in pairs along a draught chain. When the team
had been led off burbling and complaining a beautifully decorated wooden chest draped in embroidered cloth was unloaded by a man with a blue-and-white shawl over his head and ceremoniously carried by four more into a large tent set aside from the others, to the accompaniment of chanting and blasts from a curled ram’s-horn trumpet.

  The first guard came back after only a few minutes, with a young woman in her late teens beside him bearing a large bundle in her arms, her black eyes bright with curiosity. The burden seemed to be mostly folded clothing and two pairs of the soft pull-on boots these folk wore, but there were towels and combs, fiber scrubbing pads and bars of soap on the top. A younger girl of twelve or so tagged along behind her, with her dark curls loose under a floppy hat woven of the same coarse fiber; that seemed to be about the age girl-children switched over to the snood-like thing.

  The warrior spoke: “The Judge invites the great ladies who are the honored guests of the bnei Yaakov—”

  Which meant sons of Jacob literally, but had the ring of a tribal ethnonym in her mind. And the term he used for Judge was Shofet, which implied rulership as well as deciding cases according to law.

  “—to the evening meal. This maiden is Shulamit bat-Raanan, who will, ah, see to your needs.”

  At a guess . . .

  “If those needs include hot water, soap and clean clothing, we are most profoundly grateful to your sister, Meshek son of Raanan, and to you, and to your father. We’ve had little opportunity for such of late, and it’s been very sorely missed.”

  He’d been rather serious, but he grinned at that, and at Reiko’s nod and slight bow of thanks. She also thought he was somewhat relieved that they wanted to bathe and change their rather dirty, dusty, smelly, sweat-stained garments. That meant he didn’t have to be blunt about telling them to make themselves fit for civil company.