“You were making a funny noise last night while you slept,” she murmured, forcing a curve onto her lips. “Sort of a snore with a little chirp at the end. I liked it. Can I hold you tonight and let you be my little cricket?”
How could he go so long without blinking? Why wasn’t he responding at all? His arms and legs were totally limp.
“You have to sit up,” she hissed. “If you won’t, they’ll just..." She swallowed. “And then I won’t have my cricket tonight.”
She sniffled. The distant rushing of the river filled her ears. Dappled shadows from the trees slid back and forth. Overhead, an eagle’s cry faded into the wind.
“Are you hungry?” She held up the stem of a cattail that she’d broken off and begun to suck. The pith was fibrous and unappetizing—not as good as the soft, almost crisp sweetness that her father had showed her once, in a green reed he’d selected after some searching along a river bank. But she was sure it was edible, and having anything in her mouth felt like heaven. Hunger twisted in her belly.
He needed to eat.
She demonstrated grinding the stalk between her molars, showed how to drain the slippery syrup from the plant, crush the starch, and spit the pulp out. When he made no move to accept it, she bit off a piece and pressed it to his mouth.
A shadow fell across her shoulder.
“Water,” said a gruff voice. “Last you’ll get till we’re on the boat. Don’t waste it.” A flaccid leather pouch landed in the dirt by her knee. Feet scuffed away, then turned back.
“He still alive?”
The sick dread filling Kinora’s stomach redoubled. She ducked her head in affirmation.
“Kid.” A muddy boot prodded his toe. “You want to be buzzard food?”
He didn’t react.
“He’s just tired,” Kinora said quickly. She lifted a knee and rolled his head slightly.
And he blinked.
“Well, do your business and get ready to ride again. And get him moving. The buzzards might wait for you, but we won’t. We’re in a hurry.”
The boots walked off.
Kinora took a shaky breath, then allowed herself some swallows from the pouch. After, she put the leather to the boy’s lips. He tried to bury his face in her thigh, but she held him, splashed a few drops.
“Come on, little cricket,” she whispered, hands trembling. “You need to drink something.” She stared at the bottomless brown of his eyes.
32
ahu ~ Toril
A stab of morning sunlight on steel, and the whistle of slicing air, were Toril’s only warning.
By the time his eyelids began to close, an after-image of Oji’s hand had already intersected the rotating blade and deflected it from his throat to the dust at his feet.
“Cowards,” the golden warrior spat, eyes fixed on a clump of saplings a dozen paces up the trail. “Come out and face us.”
Toril straightened from his flinch, his heart galloping as fingers tightened on his staff. He saw a flicker of tan in the shadow. Behind him, Hika growled, and he heard Malena draw her breath and step closer to him.
“Cowardice is being afraid to follow your cacique,” snapped an unfamiliar voice. Three osipi warriors, ivonas glittering around their necks, slunk onto the path ahead. “We already taught you that once, Oathizhi.”
Oji stepped toward Toril. “There’s another one circling uphill to our right,” he murmured, with scarcely a flutter of his lips. Eyes still forward, he lifted his chin and returned to normal volume. “On second thought, maybe you’re getting braver. Last time you jumped me with ten of your buddies, beat me unconscious, and left me for dead. Now you’re back with just a pair of moldy-brained chickens for escorts.” He drew his shortsword and smiled at the vulgar gesture from one of the ahu.
Toril’s mind raced. Shivi and Paka had been lagging since sunup. They were out of sight, at least a hundred paces back on the trail; perhaps the ahu weren’t aware of them, yet. He couldn’t expect any help from the older couple, but they might be spared a battle.
That left him, Malena, and Oji against four osipi? Four ahu?
Were there more?
“You didn’t take the bait,” a different ahu muttered, as he began circling to their left. “We let you see us, back in the valley, yesterday afternoon. We left the rock pile. You were supposed to chase Gorumim straight down the trail into our trap. We waited on our bellies in the bushes for an eternity.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Toril saw Malena bend to retrieve the dagger that had fallen to the ground. He reached back and tugged on her arm to pull her between him and Oji. If Gorumim’s priorities were unchanged, she was the first target.
“So when we didn’t show, Luim sent you scouting.” Oji surmised. “Most went back, but the four of you came ahead.”
Toril saw the visible ahu stiffen at the casual reference to their hidden companion. He felt Malena twitch in surprise at his side.
“Something like that,” said one of the golden men. “Bad luck for you.”
“I thought ahu had a code of honor,” Toril said. “Maybe dueling a couple men fits, but how about murdering an innocent woman? And why the ambush? Afraid of a fair fight?”
Oji thrust out his chin, adding his own challenge to Toril’s. “You imagined you’d have a nice spree of murder and then slip back for more fun abusing children. Bad luck for you. Instead you’re going to buy yourself a lonely death on a road to nowhere.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Oathizhi,” said the ahu that hadn’t yet spoken. “You could still come back with us...”
“Hah!” Oji snapped. “You think Luim would let me walk back into camp, alive?”
“Your father could forgive a lot, if you came with the blood of the woman on your blade. It would bring honor in the eyes of Gorumim.”
Oji turned to look at Malena. Toril saw a look of sadness on his face—a hollow expression of loss—and sudden doubt of Oji’s loyalty swept over him.
Luim was Oji’s father? How could he have failed to mention that detail?
Malena’s eyes were wide with terror.
Hika growled, her ears flat.
“I have no interest in Gorumim’s approval,” Oji said flatly, after a long pause. “Nor in Luim’s idea of honor.” He turned his eyes back to the trio of warriors that were now closing in. “Yet to respect the friendship of this stonecaster, and his wife, and to save the children you plan to murder, I will die today with a smile on my lips. After I kill all of you.”
The strike would have taken Toril’s breath away, if he’d had time to think about it. But adrenaline was coursing through his veins, and hours of drill with weaponmasters took over, plotting thrust and parry at a pace beyond conscious thought. He caught a flash of gold as the fourth ahu broke from the trees, saw Hika leap, and managed to swing the staff to intercept a kitar just in time.
At the periphery of his vision, blurs of gold erupted as Oji joined battle with the other three ahu. He felt the wind generated by their movements—but he could spare no attention for threats from that direction. Death demanded his full attention from head-on.
The kitar was a weapon made for lightning thrust at close quarters, and if ahu got close enough to use it, it was lethal. One punch from the blade above an osipi’s fist, and your heart stopped beating forever.
Osipi liked the kitar because it was easy to carry and didn’t require brute strength. Velocity usually negated the need for choreographed defense.
Toril had no halberd or pike to keep the osipi at bay, but his staff and height gave him superior reach. And as with the wolves, Hika’s reflexes were fast enough to compensate, a little, for Toril’s tardy reactions.
Even so, he was in trouble.
The osipi hurdled the staff and slashed at Toril’s throat, blade halfway to its mark before his feet touched ground again. Toril leaned back violently, skewing the momentum of his blow, and felt a burn across his chin as metal whipped out of his field of vision.
Hika sn
apped at the ahu’s ankle and destroyed his balance; Toril tried to capitalize by using the back half of his stroke to crush a leg. The blow was well aimed, but by the time it arrived the ahu had converted his stumble into a handspring, and Toril was ducking a second time.
He felt Malena’s hands against his back.
He feinted, slid wrist over wrist, and shoved the tip of the staff outward. Anticipating the sweep but not the thrust, the ahu’s shoulder took the blow, and Toril saw him wince as his collarbone cracked.
But the golden warrior didn’t slow down. In a blur, he pulled a knife with his other hand, kneed Hika, and flicked his wrist.
Toril threw himself sideways, twisting his torso out of the way. Instantly, he knew the flying knife would miss—but in the moment he had to absorb this fact, he also realized that he had lost. The osipi was spinning in the opposite direction, looking past Toril.
Looking at Malena.
Toril saw the fear frozen on his wife’s face as she knelt, a dagger clenched in white fingers. Beyond her, Oji flashed, seemingly six-armed, battling three opponents at a dizzying pace.
“No!” Toril shouted.
As he crashed to the ground he flung the staff, desperate to distract his opponent. Then something collided with his head, his vision dimmed, and for a moment he almost lost consciousness. He felt himself tumble down the incline at the edge of the path.
His fingers grasped at weeds, dug into dirt and gravel. The horizon spun, darkened, then righted itself. He scrambled up the slope, stumbling in his haste, in time to see Hika between the ahu and Malena, collapsing from a blow. He tugged at his belt.
One of Oji’s opponents was twitching feebly on the ground; another limped in an arc along the edge of the trail. Oji’s chest was heaving. He stood between his adversaries and Malena, but apparently hadn’t noticed Toril’s absence; he made no effort to guard the man who’d attacked Toril and just disabled Hika. The neglected ahu leapt toward Malena, kitar outstretched.
Toril whipped the sling with every bit of power he could muster.
The stone hummed out and intersected the ahu’s head behind the near ear, making a neat hole. The warrior’s lunge continued, but it was a lifeless arm that held the kitar, and it plowed into soil, missing Malena’s chest by a span.
At almost the same instant, Oji blurred again. Gold knotted around the nearer of his remaining opponents, sprang away, licked the other briefly, and then re-coalesced into a figure moving at normal speed. Both of the other ahu fell lifeless to the ground. Then Oji pitched forward as well, and all was still except for Toril’s ragged breathing, and a whining from Hika.
Toril dropped one knee into the dirt and stretched a hand toward his wife’s shoulder. Her eyes were closed, her face pale. She rocked back and forth, both hands clasping the dagger point-down in a white-knuckled death grip. He saw her arms tremble.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, then jerked back as the dagger slashed wildly toward his face.
He caught a forearm and a wrist as the blow went wide, felt the iron in her tendons as she jerked around and aimed at his heart.
“It’s me,” he said again, his breath escaping in a gasp at the exertion of arresting the blade. “Malena, it’s Toril.”
Her eyes opened, but she showed no sign of recognition or understanding. Her expression was feral. She leaned in, putting as much weight as she could muster behind the knife. The point hovered a handsbreadth from Toril’s chest, trembling under the tension from both directions.
“Malena!”
Gradually he forced her arms back.
“Drop the knife!” he grunted.
Her breathing turned to sobs, and Toril felt the pressure in her arms begin to fade. Then, without warning, she jerked away, coming close to slicing his hands as she tried to tear free.
“Let go of me!” she screamed. “Let go!”
“I’ll let go when you drop the knife,” Toril said. He shook her wrists. “Drop the knife. Drop it!”
The dagger thudded into the dirt.
Toril let go.
Malena rolled onto her side, curled up in a fetal position, and began to shiver silently.
Toril tossed the dagger out of reach, then sank into a seated posture at his wife’s back.
After a few moments, he touched her shoulder.
She did not react.
One strand at a time, he pulled back hair plastered to her cheek. “You are not alone,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
When at last she grew still, Toril felt her reach up and put a hand over his, pressing his fingertips against her cheekbone.
33
Two Forks ~ Toril
Shivi coughed apologetically.
Toril looked up.
“Hika seems a bit dazed, but I think she’s more bruised than seriously hurt,” the old woman said, stroking black and white fur. She gestured to the limp piles of gold in the dirt. “All the ahu are dead.”
“Except Oji,” Paka supplemented, who was kneeling beside Toril’s friend. “He’s got a couple slashes on his arms, but mostly seems to be in one piece. Breathin’ steady, anyway.” He leaned forward and pressed a palm to the warrior’s forehead. His eyebrows shot up, and his hand jerked back. “He’s burnin’ up! Hot to the touch.”
“Aiki trance,” Shivi offered quietly.
Paka and Toril both gaped. Toril felt Malena’s breathing change and her posture stiffen.
“Are you sure?” he said.
Shivi shrugged. “It’s a guess. But a good one, I think.”
“But... he said nothing...” Toril faltered. He recalled the curl of Oji’s lips as the small warrior dismissed the empty ivona that Toril had found him wearing, the casual reference his friend had made to being jumped by ten men. What man needed to be subdued by ten ahu?
“I’m guessing you didn’t split the attackers evenly?” Shivi said.
Toril shook his head. “I had my hands full with one. Even with a staff and Hika’s help, I only lasted a few moments. Oji took the other three himself.” He thought of the blur his friend had made as he leapt between opponents.
“Just one kind of warrior fights three ahu and lives.”
“They were afraid of him,” added Malena, rolling onto her knees and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “He said he was going to kill all four, and they knew he meant it.”
Paka sighed. “So our little friend has a more complicated history than we thought.”
“Most people do, Pakatita,” Shivi said. She patted the dog, pushed herself stiffly into a standing position, and limped over to Oji. “Wish I’d brought more of my herbs and bandages from those saddlebags.”
“Oji is Luim’s son,” Malena announced.
Toril nodded to answer the surprised looks of the older couple. “They claimed his father would take him back into the clan if...“
“If he came back with my blood on his blade,” Malena finished. She blinked rapidly, turned her head to the side. “He said he would die for his friends instead. And I... was calling him an... ‘almost’...”
Incongruously, Paka laughed.
“Well, cheer up, lass. You’re not the first to underestimate one of the fast folk. You can make it up to him. Like I said, he’s breathin’ fine and doesn’t look that hurt.”
“This is not the most extreme trance I’ve seen,” Shivi said. “My guess is the heat from the trance fades in an hour or so.”
Toril eyed the old woman speculatively. “Where have you seen an aiki trance before? To my knowledge, no aiki ahu had left Merukesh in living memory, until I saw one in Bakar.”
“I... we... had a son...”
“He chose the golden fork,” said Paka. “We followed him south after his naming day.”
Shivi closed her eyes as if to soften difficult memories. “I lived with him and his new... clan... for a season, so that I might understand his life better. I saw much of osipi culture there. The People have many beautiful qualities, but it is hard on a mother to walk away from the
little boy she suckled. Perhaps you caught my sadness when I lectured Oji the other day about how choices affect one’s family.”
“I’m sorry,” Malena said.
“For what?” Paka said. “Nanar was an honorable child. We are proud of him.”
“But you lost him, didn’t you?”
Shivi nodded. “I am told that he lived to be twenty-four. He married and had children. And they doubtless had children as well. But I have never met any of my golden grandchildren or great-grandchildren. They migrated far to the south, and I lost track of Nanar’s tribe entirely. I suppose even if I knew how to find them, my descendants would find me strange. Large and slow and foreign.”
“Now you see why we have a soft spot for little ones,” Paka said with artificial heartiness. “Frustrated nurturing.”
Malena stood and walked over to Shivi. She hugged the older woman and whispered something in her ear that Toril couldn’t make out.
Shivi smiled and pushed Malena’s braid back into place, then turned back to the group. “Anyway, as far as Oji is concerned, I suspect he’s just exhausted,” she said. “We had no sleep at all last night, and precious little in the days before. That’s hard enough on an ordinary human, but it’s almost impossible for an osipi to sustain. Endurance is not their talent. And then he tops it off with pitched battle in an aiki trance? No wonder he’s unconscious; he’s lucky he didn’t burn himself out worse. Give him a while to rest, and he’ll be back to normal. Or as close to it as any aiki ahu ever gets.”
“We sacrificed a lot to get ahead of Gorumim,” Toril said. “We just killed all four of the scouts he sent ahead, which may keep him in the dark a bit longer. We can’t squander that advantage.”
“Of course not,” Paka replied. “Why don’t you and Malena go ahead to Two Forks, and Shivi and I will stay behind till Oji has rested? The dog would love a nap, too.”
“Hah!” Shivi snorted affectionately. “My virile husband doesn’t want to admit he’s a bit footsore himself.”
Paka pulled on his beard and raised his eyebrows.
“Yesterday I didn’t want to be left behind,” Shivi continued, eyes directed at Toril, “but today the sun is bright, the road is broader and better travelled, town’s not far off, and I have an aiki ahu to defend us. And my old bones need a rest. We should have two or three hours buffer, at least, before we have to worry about the main group getting here. We’ll make sure Oji’s awake and we’re on the road long before then.”
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