by Dragon Lance
“Never fear, my son,” she said gently. “We will win.”
“I want the Jade Men,” he mumbled. “I want them to enter Arku-peli any way they can and bring back the Arkuden’s head!”
Nacris brought one callused hand up to stroke his hair. “All right. You’re a good boy, Zanni. You can have the Jade Men, but listen to me, will you? Do as I tell you, and everything will be as we want. I will take care of everything.”
His hands knotted into fists, gripping the back of her leather jerkin. “Yes, Mother.”
*
The nomads fed Beramun well and gave her a place to sleep with other girls. She slept poorly though, tormented by visions of Zannian’s triumph in Yala-tene. She finally gave up and lay awake, thinking of those good people degraded or killed by the green dragon. She couldn’t lie comfortably, her belly full, while the village was in peril. She must go back right away. She would try one last time to convince Karada to take her band to Yala-tene. If the answer was still no, then Beramun would go alone.
Beramun left the girls’ communal tent. It was well dark, and the red and white moons were up. Moonmeet was not far off. The camp was quiet, though she did see sentinels on the surrounding hills, ever vigilant against the Silvanesti.
Shouldering her gear, she set out across the open center of the camp toward Karada’s tent. When she reached the far side of the firepit, a figure flitted out of the darkness directly in her path. Fair skin and dark freckles stood out in the moonlight.
“Mara?”
The girl held a finger to her lips. “Please,” she whispered. “You must help me!”
“What is it? Do you want to return to Yala-tene?”
“No, it’s Karada. Something strange is happening to her. Come!”
Without waiting for an answer, Mara took her hand and dragged her into the chiefs tent. A low, smoky fire was still burning on the hearth, Karada, clad only in a light doeskin shift, was sitting with her back to the entry flap, facing the fire.
“Karada?” Beramun said, moving cautiously toward the woman.
The only reply was a vague muttering. Circling around, Beramun saw the chieftain was awake. At least, her eyes were open. Hair unbraided and disheveled, eyes wide and rimmed in red, Karada stared into the flames and spoke in a low, unintelligible voice.
Beramun knelt beside her. “Karada, are you well?”
“It’s hard. It’s very hard,” the woman said. Her eyes remained focused on the fire.
“What’s hard?”
“Living with a curse.”
Mara came up on the other side. To her, Beramun said, “Have you ever seen her act this way before?”
“No, never.” Mara was on the verge of tears.
Suddenly, Karada leaped to her feet, hands waving above her head. “He’s down! He’s bleeding! Get up! Get up!”
“What are you talking about? Who’s down?”
Karada stared wildly at Beramun, looking straight through her. “Amero!” she cried. “He has a spear in his thigh. He’s bleeding... and the enemy is coming. Amero!”
She whirled, as if she were actually seeing the events taking place. “Yes! That’s it. Right into him! Yes!” Beramun tried to restrain her, but the woman brushed her aside like a gnat. “Now pick him up. That’s it! I’ve got him!” she cried. “Run! Run! Run!”
After screaming the last three words, Karada slumped to the ground, her eyes closed. The two girls couldn’t rouse her, so they straightened her limbs and made her comfortable. They kept silent vigil by her until she stirred after several long moments.
“Here,” said Mara, holding out a cup.
Karada drank. She spied Beramun and lowered the cup. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“Mara asked me to come. You were in a trance, dreaming with your eyes wide open.”
“It wasn’t a dream. I was far away. I saw a battle. My spirit was there!”
“You mentioned Amero. You saw him?”
“Yes.” Karada drew her knees up and locked her hands around them. “He was wounded, but I dragged him to safety.”
Mara and Beramun exchanged looks. “You saved him, Karada?” asked Beramun carefully.
“You doubt me? Was my brother wounded, here?” Karada touched the back of her right thigh.
“Yes, in the battle beneath the wall, before I left,” Beramun said, impressed.
The nomad chief struck her palm with her fist. “Fool! He went out to fight with an open wound like that?”
“What does this mean?” Mara asked, shaking her head in confusion.
Karada explained, “I was sitting by the fire, tired, and I slept. When next I opened my eyes, I saw Yala-tene and its wall, though I haven’t been there in twelve years, before the wall was begun. It was night. The villagers attacked the raiders’ camp and drove livestock back over the wall. But I wasn’t just watching it, I was there!”
“You never left this tent.”
“Maybe not in body, but my spirit was there!” Karada turned to Beramun. “You didn’t tell me Nacris was with the raiders.”
“The one-legged woman? You know her?”
“Oh, yes. I know her well enough to kill her when next I see her!”
The import of this sank in, and Beramun exclaimed, “You’re going to Yala-tene!”
“Yes, and all my people.”
Beramun threw her arms around the scarred woman. “May all your ancestors bless you!” she shouted joyously.
Karada pushed the jubilant girl away. “They haven’t yet,” she said gruffly. “An old curse still burns in my blood, but I’ll go to save my brother and to kill a hated enemy. The good and the bad of it balance out, don’t you think?”
“It’s all good to me! I want Zannian cold and dead, too!”
“If he gets in my way, he will be.” Karada combed her wild hair with her fingers. “Beramun, right now I need you to tell me everything that’s happened in the west. I’ve not been over the mountains in twelve years.”
They talked far into the night, and Mara fell asleep with her head on Karada’s knee. Before dawn, Beramun gave out as well.
When she woke, the camp was in turmoil. Tents were going down in great puffs of dust. Travois were being loaded, and the whole of Karada’s band was making ready to depart.
Beramun watched in amazement as the nomads readied for the journey. Except for Zannian’s raiders, she’d never seen so large a band on the move.
Half the nomads carried bows and wore caps of hammered bronze. Their hair was long, men and women alike, and they rode tall horses. Like Karada, they had spirit marks painted on their cheeks or foreheads.
The other half of the band dressed less splendidly, in simple buckskins and woven grass hats. These included the elders of the band and mothers with small babies. They rode short, sturdier ponies, most of them dragging a travois behind.
Karada appeared, sitting tall and proud on her wheat-colored horse. The warm morning sun flashed off her polished bronze helmet and eased the harshness of the scars on her face and neck. With her white wolf fur mantle and tawny rawhide trews, she looked like the Spirit of the Plains in flesh.
Gazing at her, Beramun felt a lump grow in her throat. For the first time she understood why people followed this woman into peril and fought for her till death. If they could reach Yala-tene in time, Zannian and his ragtag raiders were done for.
Karada was leading a second animal by the reins. She tossed these to Beramun, saying, “Time you learned to ride.”
Beramun climbed awkwardly onto the sorrel horse. Once seated, it seemed she could see a league from her lofty perch. She held tight to the reins and the animal’s white mane.
“Pakito!” Karada shouted. A giant of a man with long brown hair appeared on foot out of the dust. Beramun stared. The fellow was more than two paces tall!
The chieftain asked him, “Are you ready?”
“No, but that won’t stop you!” the big man replied.
She laughed. “Lead the band out, Pakito.”
&n
bsp; “Aye, Karada.”
The nomads formed into a rough column, four horses wide. The bow-armed nomads made up the outside columns, shielding those inside. Beramun was amazed to see the enormous Pakito mounted on an equally giant, gray-dappled steed. Towering over everyone, he shouted commands in a bull-like voice, and the nomads began to move.
Karada and Beramun sat to one side, watching the band pass. Mara rode by, perched on a long travois with some dusty, laughing children. Beramun waved, but Mara turned her face away. She had grown jealous of the favor Karada showed to Beramun.
The tail of the long column of people and horses at last came into view, and Karada asked, “Ready, Beramun?”
The girl gripped her mount’s reins tightly. “I am.”
“Good. We’ve a long way to go.”
Sister of the Sword
(ca. 3995 PC)
Chapter 1
The setting sun painted the walled town of Yala-tene in soft colors – golden yellow, warm orange, dusky red. One hue followed another until they were all swallowed by the indigo of twilight. When the day’s last glow subsided, stars appeared in the darkening expanse of sky and the early summer evening took on a crisp chill.
Twenty-two pairs of eyes fixed on the scene were blind to the beauty of sky and sunset. The eyes belonged to twenty-two young men lying on their bellies on a low hill that rose from the bank of the Plains River. The sand on which they lay cooled quickly as night fell, but the youths remained completely motionless. They regarded Yala-tene intently, no hint of emotion on their faces.
They looked identical. Their hair was short and slicked down with a mixture of beeswax, nut oil, and plant dye, and their skin was stained dark green.
They were the Jade Men, raised from early childhood to worship the green dragon Sthenn and carry out his wishes without question, without fail. When their master was away, they gave obedience to Nacris, adopted mother of them all.
For three turnings of the moons, a band of seven hundred raiders, led by Nacris’s son Zannian, had occupied the Valley of the Falls. They had plundered and murdered their way across the plains without opposition. Yet, in spite of Zannian’s leadership, their own determination to plunder and ravage, and their terror of their mighty patron, Sthenn, they had still failed to take the village. Direct assault had not worked, and they’d been unable to terrorize the villagers into surrendering. The raiders’ last resort was to choke the stubborn valley folk into submission, to cut them off from outside aid until their resolve was broken by starvation and despair.
The village, called Yala-tene (“mountain nest”) by its inhabitants, was known to the Jade Men and the raiders as Arku-peli, or “place of the dragon.” It had three sources of strength: the guardianship of the bronze dragon Duranix, the stone wall that encircled the town, and the leadership of the town’s headman, Amero. Sthenn had lured Duranix away on an aerial chase, and no one had seen either beast since before the siege began. The wall had withstood every stratagem Zannian and Nacris devised to overcome it. That left the headman.
Amero, son of Oto, was Zannian’s target. If he could be captured, the village would certainly lose heart. Zannian would achieve his lifelong dream of being chief of all the plains; Nacris would have her revenge upon Amero, brother of Karada, the woman she held responsible for crippling her and killing her first mate; and Sthenn would have destroyed the “pet” humans of his old enemy, Duranix.
That was the Jade Men’s mission tonight: capture Amero.
Nacris had prepared them with a ceremony both simple and mysterious. For two days, the Jade Men had fasted. Though the rest of the raider camp still feasted on the captured bounty of Arku-peli and its lush valley, the Jade Men ate nothing and drank only water. After two days, Nacris broke their fast with a special stew filled with centipedes, cockroaches, and black crickets. Eating these night creatures, she said, would make them likewise silent, stealthy, and unseen.
At a predetermined time, the last Jade Man in line rose up on his knees. He was the leader, differentiated from the rest by a daub of yellow paint on his forehead. He pressed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to his lips and blew. The sound he made was a high squeak, like the call of a bat on the wing. The other Jade Men stood. Each was armed with an obsidian knife, sharp as a viper’s fang, and a mace whose heavy diorite head could burst a skull with a single blow.
Their leader waved them forward. In a single line, they crept over the hill toward the distant town. In the gathering darkness, against the lush grass of the valley floor, their green coloring rendered them invisible.
They passed through the remnants of previous battles – cracked spears warped from exposure, broken flint blades, the decaying carcasses of horses. The smell of death meant nothing to the Jade Men. Having grown up in the green dragon’s forest lair, the rank odor of decay was part of their daily fare.
A few paces beyond the wreckage of battle the killing ground began. Where once the tent camp of wanderers who traded with Yala-tene stood, now there was a barren wasteland. The traders had pulled up stakes and fled the valley in advance of the raiders’ arrival. The villagers had set fire to the grass and underbrush that remained, clearing the land to prevent sneak attacks.
The attack of the Jade Men, however, went forward. They slowed their advance to make their movements less detectable and placed their bare feet carefully, so no stray noises would give them away.
The walls bulked higher as the Jade Men drew near. They could see sentinels, long spears poised on their shoulders, walking atop the wall between trios of blazing torches. This was the baffled entrance into the town, where walls were the lowest. The normal openings through the wall had been filled with boulders and rubble. Consequently this vulnerable place was the most brightly lit and best defended.
The leader slanted off to the right, away from the light, and his troop followed. The twenty-two Jade Men headed for a spot where the wall made one of its three outward jogs. Village masons had to zigzag the wall here to find bedrock on which to anchor the structure. The notches gave natural cover to the Jade Men. Guards on other parts of the wall could not see into the corners.
A dozen paces away, the leader slowed. The high stone curtain darkened the ground here, making it hard to see ahead. In spite of their careful approach, one of their number fell into a prepared pit. The hole was filled with sharpened stakes, and the luckless Jade Man was impaled through his left thigh.
Though he made no outcry, his slide into the trap dislodged gravel and dirt. The resulting cascade seemed loud as a shout to the silent group. They froze, awaiting the blaze of torchlight, the cry of alarm, and the rain of death that would follow when the villagers spotted them.
Nothing happened. The leader crept along on his belly until he reached the pit. He made his way down into the steep-sided hole. At the bottom, his comrade lay grievously wounded, biting his own hand to keep from screaming. Feeling around in the dark, the leader discovered the sharpened stake was thrust all the way through his man’s thigh.
It was a crippling injury. There was no chance he could run or climb with such a wound. Nor could he be left behind. There was too much chance he might make a noise.
Nacris had chosen purposely the Jade Men for this mission. The twenty-two green-painted fighters represented the twenty-two years since the founding of the village of Yala-tene – and the twenty-two years since Nacris’s ignominious defeat at the hands of her archenemy, Karada. It was a deliberate number, imbued with secret power, yet the leader knew he must now compromise that very power. He plucked the knife from the doomed youth’s waist, then reached out to rest his hand on the fellow’s cheek. He felt rather than heard the wounded man sigh and give a nod of acceptance.
With one stroke, the leader cut his comrade’s throat from ear to ear.
Burning with deadly resolve, the leader climbed up out of the pit. Though Nacris had ordered them to bring Amero back alive if possible, he vowed now that it would not happen. By the sacrifice in the pit, the
fate of the village headman had been decided: a life would be exchanged for a life.
On hands and knees, the leader led the rest of the band to the base of the wall. Other pit traps dotted the ground around them. Some were hidden by branches of willow and sprinkled with dirt and ash, but no more Jade Men fell amiss. The group was soon gathered at the inside corner of the wall.
They’d practiced this maneuver many times by scaling the tall stone tower at the ruined river bridge. The two brawniest Jade Men faced each other, each butting one shoulder against the wall. Arms fully extended, they gripped each other’s shoulders and settled their feet wide apart. Two of their comrades climbed atop them and repeated their stance, then two more. When the fourth pair began climbing up, the men on the bottom grunted and shifted under the weight. Two more Jade Men joined them, bracing them.
A single man worked his way to the top and leaned both hands against the inward-leaning masonry. Once in place, he was only a single man’s height from the top of the wall. The twelfth youth hauled himself up, and his fingers easily reached the rim of the parapet.
The leader, still on the ground, took one last look around. All was still. Putting his slain comrade’s knife in his teeth, he started up. It was not an easy ascent. The living ladder was slick with sweat and trembled under the terrible strain. He ignored everyone beneath him, concentrating on his goal, the top of the hated wall.
At last he slid onto the flat, open ledge. Off to his right three torches burned, their shafts lashed together in a tripod. He saw no sign of a watchman. Leaning over the edge, he signaled for the others to join him.
In short order, eight Jade Men lay atop the wall with him. The twelve who made up the ladder quietly unstacked themselves and huddled in the dark corner of the wall.
Nine Jade Men were now in Arku-peli. Nacris had chosen these nine (as well as the one who’d been lost to the pit trap) because they were the strongest in spirit. They would do whatever it took to fulfill her orders, down to sacrificing all their comrades.