Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  ‘When you say they were running out of prisoners …?’

  ‘I mean they’d killed them, run them into the ground. They used to dump them if they got too tired. They’d throw them off the bridge and lean over to watch. They made the prisoners watch too. Then punished them if they reacted.’

  The man made a note, frowning.

  ‘Funny, in a way. All they were doing was giving us more reasons to fight. To take risks. To go in harder, do anything we could to destroy them.’

  Both the man and woman looked up.

  ‘You want to know more?’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ the woman said.

  ‘Okay, well, the bridge had a flaw, a big gap in it not far from the road. Every time the vehicle passed across, it had to match exactly the position of the two tracks they’d laid down. It meant it had to go very slowly, another weakness. We knew if it fell into the hole they’d never get it out again. We more or less based the ambush around it. We thought if we did that we’d win. We discussed it a lot, the risks, but there was always a group among the hunters wanting to do it. They weren’t the biggest, they weren’t the strongest either, but I knew they could climb well and shoot, and I thought that was all we needed. That’s what I thought.’ She looked down ruefully. ‘Anyway ... the locals had told us a way to get under the river, so we knew we could pin them down from three or four locations around the bridge, most of them at height. I was planning to be on the bridge with the hunters. Everything would be down to us in the end. Our job was to make sure the tracks were loose enough so the vehicle would fall as it crossed over.’

  The man studied her. ‘You mean you had to get underneath it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He nodded. ‘Sounds dangerous. Extremely.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Had you seen their weapons working? Did you know what you were up against?’

  ‘We’d seen them firing a few times. We knew what to expect.’

  ‘Weren’t you, well, frightened?’

  ‘Yes, at times, before, when we were planning it. I think we all were. But when it came to the day … not really. Vadraskar was never scared of things like that. When she went out to fight, killing was all she thought about. It wasn’t an obstacle. Killing was the only thing in her mind.’

  Chapter 46 — Preparing For Battle

  Making her way through the ragged lakeside shelters she can see as she turns uphill the glimmer of tall battle horses decorated with lethal metal spikes.

  The presences swirling, swooping at her. She sees more: behind the tyrant as she rode was an iron cannon shackled to the bed of a wooden trailer, the small wheels trundling grittily. Ahead of them bodies strung from the trees, smoke overhanging the plains.

  VAD-RAS-KAR ...

  VAD-RAS-KAR ...

  More: drums beating in the camp as she touched the horse with her spurs and turned from the path and rode on to address the ranks of spear-wielding mercenaries gathered from provinces near and far. Compelling them to fight in her name; to do her bidding in the fields. A speech whose force rather than its words seemed to control every mind ...

  The images crackle and fade. Leaving the shelters, she hikes up to the western side of the arena, soon to pass a cavemouth in the entrance of which sits a group of people splicing and whittling slender birchwood rods, hardening the wood over the fire. Similar scenes of industry are taking place all around the great rock circus. There is the constant thud of axes. Children are running errands in every quarter, fetching wood and water as cakes of fatty foods are cooked to sustain the volunteer force on their perilous journey. The grey smoke holding a tang which, in spite of all that is in her mind, stirs an antique hunger for blood.

  The tent she shares with Radjík is in a central location another pathway up. She is approaching it when some youngsters call to her, and she nods encouragement to them. They are grouped in the next cave along, fitting fletches and specially crafted heads into arrowshafts. Some of them reboring holes in the ends of the shafts so that the heads sit more securely. Their crates are filled with wooden bundles, many of them long barrel-shaped shafts of the sort used for distance firing. She watches the youngsters working with their nimble fingers, the odour of hot glue pervading the air as they bind with fine wet gut strings the lethal barbs that will be despatched upon the enemy.

  Arriving at her tent, she pulls open a sleeve and kicks off her boots and enters the gloom. All she can do is hope. Hope in what she trusts. That somewhere is the teacher. Yes, the teacher, her, the girl with a name borrowed from a map, a girl who will feel alive and happy and wanted, her grisly tasks finished and done for. And when it is over, all of them rejoicing together: dancing, shouting, hoisting drinks, twirling in a wild ecstatic czárdás of victory.

  ~O~

  Later, a single lantern burning on the floor. Wood crackling in a brazen bowl. On her bedding lies the quiver she’d dropped there earlier, along with a spare bundle of arrows; beside it the bow finally returned to her by Markos following repairs, shrouded in its woollen sleeve.

  Vadraskar seems to have quietened for the moment. She looks over these items and they seem alien to her somehow, the accoutrements of somebody she doesn’t want to know, yet knows she must become.

  She takes out her mirror and turns to the lantern with the cold shard trembling in her hand. Then holds it up to her face.

  There it is again, that mysterious dark oval, that hieroglyph which has blossomed and aged and withered so many times before. Those eyes like templates in which the secrets of her soul had been written so long ago. Secrets she fears she may never decipher, never understand.

  What’s the name what’s the name what’s the name what’s the name ...

  She stares deeper, squeezing, getting the juice from the pod. Dark squirtings, hot like blood. Squirtings like the jets spitting from the ribbed container.

  Eyes black, unfathomable. Eyes that find tiny flutterings at the corners like pale hummingbird wings. Eyes hungry; eyes burning.

  She holds on, shaking as she tests herself, sees what she can endure, then she throws the shard into the trunk. Exhaling, she goes to the bedding and stretches out alongside her weapons to recover.

  Eventually Radjík enters.

  She asks the hunter in a dull voice how she is doing.

  Radjík turns to her with a pot of grease. ‘Stinks,’ she says. ‘You sure we have to do it?’

  Too fragile to nod her head, she murmurs, ‘Afraid so. If you end up in the river, you’ll need protection.’ She watches as Radjík removes her jacket, adding, ‘I hear your brother’s coming.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can he walk?’

  ‘Says he can. Sonja’s comin too. Just been to see em, they’re kissin and stuff.’ Radjík looks over at her bedding, at the curved bronze plate lying there. ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Armour. To cover your stomach. I’d tell you to cover your chest, too, but it’d be hard to climb.’

  ‘Just tie it across, yeah?’

  ‘I’ll … show you in a minute.’

  Radjík looks back at her. ‘You feeling alright?’

  ‘I just need to stay here for a while. I need to rest.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Headache.’

  ‘Yeah? You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Radjík watches her a moment, then moves away, sniffing at the pot. Jaala lies still. She hears Radjík roving around the tent and then everything darkens and she is alone with the voices. She crushes her eyes tight shut, and as she does, it seems another’s flitter open.

  ... And she was speaking without speaking and there was a warm wind on her arms and the dust up high and an iron voice roaring to a muscular hooded man carrying a huge shining sabre. The tyrant surveying the packed courtyard bleakly, studying the faces of the visiting dignitaries; then ordering him to begin.

  He then working steadily in a row, striding two, three paces between each of the kneeling bodies
, his bronze skin gleaming in the sun as he swung with the great curving blade, removing ten heads with ten clean strokes, the ten columns of vertebrae making a dull chiming sound like the summons of a distant bell and the stalls and the wide flagstones sprayed with droplets.

  She surveying the baskets all spattered and soaking, ten of them, the raw and butchered necks with the sun-bright blood chugging out in channels. Drowning the ghastly death faces agape like monkeys where they lay. The channels trembling, faltering, and the headless carcasses tipping forward with their hands behind their backs as if inviting further desecration, further harm beyond their sentence. The dignitaries looking on in horror and a few of them already crossing the courtyard, draped figures hurrying away through the arches to call for their aides. She could smell war on the horizon and her voice was clear and loud as she ordered the heads to be tossed over the wall in the direction of the rising smoke and eternally beating drums.

  The chanting, vociferous crowd bellowing her name:

  VAD-RAS-KAR ...

  VAD-RAS-KAR ...

  Watching the last of the visitors depart with a strange smile on her face. Then ordering the bodies to be cauterised and washed and taken to her chamber. Striding off expectantly, reaching the interior stairs with a deep twitch in her loins that demanded immediate satisfaction …

  She sits up, her skin damp with sweat and her breathing sharp and shallow as she looks around. Like someone dumped there, kidnapped; someone lost.

  To hear a fine patter of rain on the waxed skin of the tent, voices calling across the arena. She looks over and Radjík is standing awkwardly in her dark underclothes.

  ‘Can’t get it to stay still,’ Radjík mutters, pressing the plate to her front whilst trying to tether it in place.

  ‘Wait there,’ she says in a flat tone, dizzy, feeling strangely light, then she rises and goes to where the girl is standing and secures the plate with a few sharp tugs and knots it off.

  Radjík winces. ‘You feelin any better?’

  ‘A bit. I’m just tense.’

  ‘Yeah. Know what you mean.’ Radjík looks down at herself, her torso oddly bloated above her slender legs. ‘You wearin one too?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and goes aside to change dress. As soon as she is ready they extinguish the lights and leave the shelter.

  Within the cave entrance stands a heavy iron spear. She takes it and looks down over the arena. It appears to her as a dark ruined chamber of floating fires, its people adrift within blue keeps of smoke. Preparations for departure are well underway. Armed figures are descending to the path that encircles the lake, heading in the direction of the stationed vehicles. They carry kitbags and rolls, their families in close attendance. Looking out to the central area where the communal caves are emptying, she notices Yvor climbing downhill, freshly shaven, his face long and smooth, almost equine in appearance, his breastplate gleaming brown and gold by turns in the light of many fires. His brother Pétar climbing down after him with measured strides like a leaden minotaur. As they descend, the brothers go to assist a group of men carrying a wooden stretcher laden with crates and kegs brought out from the supplies cave. Others are leaving the entrance with thick coils of rope over their shoulders and some are carrying chains, the men with their beards twisted into forks and the women with glistening horsetails and with heavy amulets around their necks that swing to and fro, strung stones to deflect the enemy eye, guarding themselves against evil. Some have already blacked their faces and some are clad in long brazen greaves or have strapped to their fronts crude aprons of hammered metals or hides that hang stiffly and which sway as they walk. Everywhere the shadows are bristling with the silhouettes of spears, the twisted tips of great oak and sinew bows. On the combatants march, a wet wind gusting through and their eyes coldly glittering, some staring furiously as they join the procession of torches and lamps moving towards the carts.

  She stands tall in the darkness as she watches these manoeuvres, her eyes hardening into black styli within the severe aura of her slicked-back hair. Her gaze sweeps the rain-lashed slopes and among that warring crowd she notices Sonja and Lajos, their fists clenching bows and Lajos with his face half hidden by his hood as he spits venomously at the rocks, a figure who walks with a slight drag of the foot and with his leather jerkin buttoned tightly up the front so that he resembles something wizened and willed on by rage alone. Radjík mutters something, hitching her pack over her shoulder. ‘Let’s join them,’ Jaala says, and Radjík follows her out into the rain.

  ~O~

  As they reach the carts to load in their equipment, she is told that the villagers have arrived, that they are waiting for the Naagli leaders near the bridge.

  ‘Pétar’s looking for you,’ says Jakub, approaching with a lantern. ‘He wants you to talk to them. There’s a problem.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘He didn’t say, just asked for you.’

  She leaves the hunters behind with a warning to keep everything dry and then strides along a narrow pathway overhung with brambles. Where the lake becomes a stream cutting through a sparsely wooded valley there is a little wooden crossing. Leaving the path, she sees the villagers stationed along it in a convoy of wagons and carts covered by a motley assortment of ragged sheets and oilskins lashed to poles. Lamps and torches flutter in the darkness, bringing shape to the ponies and mules that have brought them there, bringing shape to the drivers watching on from under their caps, reins in hand.

  Crossing the sodden ground to a where a group of men are gathered, she notices the bald-headed figure of the villagers’ leader in discussion with Pétar and Yvor. The leader’s stubbled face, like that of the men around him, is set with determination. A fleck of gold glints in one ear. He is gesturing westwards with both hands as she approaches and it appears that Pétar is trying to reassure him of something. From what she can gather, the locals are still happy to join forces with the Naagli, but have no intention of coming under their command.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ she says, breaking into the conversation. The men stop talking. Somebody raises a lantern to see who it is.

  ‘This is Ranuf,’ says Yvor, indicating the leader. ‘Ranuf, this is Jaala.’

  ‘So,’ Ranuf says, and tilts his head in greeting. She nods back at him, planting her spear in the mud.

  ‘I’m trying to explain our plan,’ Pétar says in agitation. He looks flushed and unhappy. Ranuf spits aside.

  ‘They don’t like what we’ve organised. They want to try something else.’

  Ranuf looks Jaala over hesitantly as she turns to him, her face severe and unsmiling, eyebrows raised like black horns over her cold dark eyes. ‘We’ve lost many people,’ he says, spreading his hands. ‘You know this already. Our blood.’ He gestures forcefully towards the rainswept plain. ‘These are our people who have died. Ours. Our people they make slaves of.’

  ‘They killed our people, too,’ she says. ‘Hundreds of them. We lost our home. Our crops. Our animals. Our land. What is it that you want?’

  Ranuf’s eyes glitter. He sends a look to the two expressionless brothers, Pétar with his beard speckled with rain, Yvor resting a heavy iron-banded crossbow on his shoulder. ‘I don’t like your plan,’ he says. ‘It is dangerous. You want to play with the bridge. We — we hate this bridge. We tried to break it up, many time. Each time our men fell to their death. We say it’s a bad luck place.’

  She lifts her head in the rain. ‘What do you expect us to do? You want to wait until you’ve lost more people? Your children? Your future? Believe me, this bridge will just be the beginning of your bad luck. We aim to destroy them, and if you follow our plan, we’ll destroy this bridge too.’

  Ranuf smiles. ‘This is easy to say.’

  ‘He says he only wants to attack from the back, from around the pass,’ says Pétar. ‘They want to do it while the vehicle’s in the tunnel.’

  Jaala looks round at the gathered villagers. ‘No,’ she says. ‘We destroy the vehicle do
wn on the bank, or on the bridge. I understand your reasoning, but it’s not going to solve anything. They keep extra men in the tunnel, and as soon as they know they’re under attack, they’ll fight to the end. The vehicle must not return, it must not reach them. Besides, even if they don’t kill you, there’s nothing to stop them killing the prisoners.’ She looks directly into Ranuf’s face, meeting his eyes. ‘We want them to come out of the tunnel when the vehicle’s been dealt with, not before. They’ll be more vulnerable then, out in the open, and your people will have a better chance of escaping.’

  He sucks on his lip. ‘This is your thought,’ he says, hesitant now, glancing at his lieutenants. ‘A thought.’

  She turns to Pétar. ‘We need to go,’ she says, then to Ranuf adds, ‘This is your only chance, you don’t get another. Follow us out and you can think about it on the way. The longer you stand here, the worse it gets. The less time we have.’