And so the water became the stud’s property, and we his parasites.
I felt her hand on my bare back. “What are these marks?”
Her voice was raspy from dryness; I almost cautioned her not to talk, but at least speaking kept us from sliding all the way into a stupor.
I shrugged, enjoying the sensation of Northern flesh against Southron. “I’ve been a sword-dancer more than ten years. It takes its toll.”
“Then why do it?”
Another shrug. “It’s a living.”
“Then you would do something else, given the chance?”
I smiled, though she couldn’t see it. “Sword-dancing was my chance.”
“But you might have stayed with—who? The Salset?—and avoided swordwork altogether.”
“About as much as you could turn your back on your brother.”
She removed her hand from my spine.
“You claim you’re a sword-dancer,” I said. “What’s the story behind that? It’s not exactly the sort of life every woman carves out for herself.”
I thought she wouldn’t answer. Then, “A pact,” she said, “with the gods, involving a woman, a sword, and all the magic in a man.”
I snorted. “Of course.”
“A contract,” she said. “Surely you understand that much, Tiger … or do you not have such here in the South?”
“With the gods?” I laughed, though not—quite—unkindly. “Gods. What a crutch. And the weak, who can’t rely on themselves, sure know how to use it.” I shook my head. “Look, I don’t want to debate religion with you—it’s never accomplished anything. You believe whatever you want. You’re a woman; maybe you need it.”
“You don’t believe in much of anything, do you?” she asked. “Is there anything, for you?”
“Yes,” I answered readily. “A warm, willing woman … a sharp, clean sword … and a sword-dance in the circle.”
Del sighed. “How profound … and how utterly predictable.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, though the jibe hurt my pride a bit. “But what about you? You claim yourself a sword-dancer, so you know what the circle involves. You know about commitment. You know about predictability.”
“In the circle?” I heard a measure of surprise in her tone. “The circle is never predictable.”
“Neither is a woman.” I laughed. “Maybe you and the circle are well-matched after all.”
“No less than a woman and a man.”
I thought maybe she smiled. But I didn’t turn my head to find out.
Later, Del told me the stud was tired. As he’d been stumbling and trembling for quite some time, I agreed.
“We should rest him, then,” she said. “We should walk.” She didn’t wait for my answer. She simply slid off his dusty rump.
And landed in a tangle of arms and legs.
I reined in the stud and looked down on her, admiring the clean lines of her long legs since the burnous was caught around her hips. For a moment, only a moment, my fog evaporated, and I smiled.
Del glared up at me wearily. “You’re heavier than I am. Get off.”
I leaned forward in the shallow saddle and joggled my right foot enough to free it of the stirrup. Then, sloppily, I dragged the leg across the stud’s rump and saddle and slithered down, scraping my bare abdomen against the left stirrup. And not caring.
Discovering a desire in my legs to collapse upon themselves, I clung to the saddle until I could lock my knees. Del remained sprawled in the sand, although she had decorously rearranged the burnous.
“Neither of us is in any shape to walk anywhere,” I informed her. But I bent and caught a muscled wrist, pulling her to her feet. “Hang onto me, if you want.”
We staggered across the desert in a bizarre living chain: me leading the stud and Del latched onto the harness holding Singlestroke. Though he was two legs up on us, the stud didn’t do much better; he had that many more legs to coordinate. He stumbled, kicking sand against my ankles. It added to the layers already there. And even though my hide is accustomed to the heat and sunlight, I could still feel the exposed portions of my body, which was everything but the areas covered by my dhoti and harness, broiling in the blistering glare. But at least I could take it better than Del, still wrapped in scarlet silk. There were rents in the fabric and most of the gold tassels were gone, but I didn’t miss such questionable majesty. At least what remained protected her somewhat.
We walked. Always southward. Horse and man and woman.
And the two sandtiger cubs, oblivious of it all.
The stud sensed it first. He stopped short, head swinging clumsily eastward, nearly knocking me over. His nostrils expanded as he blew loudly, and I saw his ears twitch forward rigidly. Eastward. Telling me precisely the direction from which the threat came.
I squinted. Stared. Shaded my eyes with one hand. And eventually made out what came riding from the east.
“Hoolies,” I said flatly.
Del stood next to me, mimicking my posture with one pale hand. But her puzzlement was manifest, as was her consternation. Her Northern eyes couldn’t see it. I could. Clearly.
Across the horizon rose a shadow, an ocher smudge against bleached blue sky. A fine veil of sand, floating, floating, prefacing an arrival. And when the veil dissolved into the undulating vanguard of a line of riders, Del touched my arm.
“Maybe they’ll share water with us,” she said.
“I don’t think so.” It was all I could do not to snap at her.
“But the courtesy of the traveler—”
“In the Punja there is no such thing. Out here there’s one simple philosophy: fend for yourself. No one will do it for you.” I didn’t take my eyes off the advancing line of riders. “Del—stay behind me.”
I heard the hissing whine of a sword withdrawn.
I glanced at her sharply over a shoulder and saw grim determination in her face. “Put it away!” I snapped. “Don’t ever bare blade in the Punja unless you understand desert customs. Bascha—sheathe it!”
Del looked past me to the approaching riders a long moment. I knew she was tempted to disobey me; it was in every line of her posture. But she did as I had asked. Slowly. And when I glanced back myself and saw the rippling black line shimmering in the heat like a wavering mirage, I sucked in a deep, deep breath.
“Del, do not say a word. Let me do the talking.”
“I can speak for myself.” Coolly, not defiantly; a simple declaration.
I swung around and trapped her head between my hands. Our faces were only inches apart. “Do as I say! A mouth flapping when it shouldn’t can lose us our lives. Understand?”
Her eyes, looking past me, widened suddenly. “Who are those men?”
I let her go and turned around. The line of riders drew up before us, spreading out in a precise semicircle that effectively cut off our escape in three directions. The fourth lay open behind us in obscene invitation: we’d be dead before we mounted, if we were foolish enough to try it.
Like me, they were half naked. Like me, they were burned dark by the sun, but their arms were striped with spiraling scars dyed a permanent blue. Bare chests bore blue sunburst designs of differing complexities; each boy, upon reaching puberty, competes with his peers at designing the sunburst his mother—or closest female relative—incises into his skin in a painful scarification ritual. But there was one uniformity in all the sunbursts: each was offset by a yellow eye set in the exact center. Black hair was greased, clubbed back, laced with cords of various colors. Black eyes dwelled avidly on Del and me.
“Their noses—” she said in horror.
Well, they had them. But each nose was pierced by a flat enameled ring. The color of the rings, along with the cords in their hair, denote rank; colors are changed if they move upward or downward in the caste system. In this tribe, nothing is immutable except ferocity.
“Hanjii,” I said briefly.
Del’s indrawn breath of alarm was audible. “The cannibals?”
I ignored her muttered comment and turned my attention to the warrior who wore a gold ring in his nose, signifying highest rank and equivalent authority. I used the Desert dialect as I spoke to him; it passes as a universal language in the Punja.
I told him the truth. I left out nothing, except that Del had hired me to lead her across the Punja. And with good reason: to the Hanjii, women are slaves. Non-people. If I indicated that Del claimed any amount of authority over me, even in something so simple as an employer-employee relationship, I’d be considered a non-man and therefore perfectly acceptable for their cannibalistic rites. Since I didn’t want to wind up in their cookfires, I took care to depreciate Del’s value as an individual. No doubt it would earn me her enmity, if she knew, but then I didn’t intend to tell her.
Unless, of course, I had to.
I finished my story, grandly embellished Hanjii-fashion, and waited, hoping Del would keep her mouth shut.
Gold Ring conferred with the others. They all spoke Hanjii with a few scattered slang terms in Desert, so I was able to follow well enough. The gist of the discussion was they hadn’t had a feast for a while and wondered if our bones might appease their rather voracious gods. I swore inwardly and hoped my apprehension wouldn’t transmit itself to Del.
Finally the Hanjii stopped discussing matters altogether and simply stared at us intently. Which was worse. And then Gold Ring rode forward to face us from a distance more conducive to intimidation.
Except I wasn’t intimidated. Just tense. There’s a difference.
Gold Ring had four knives stuck in his braided belt above the short leather kilt he wore. The others all carried two and three, which meant he held very high rank indeed.
He gestured toward the stud. “Now.”
That needed no interpretation. I turned to Del. “We’ve been invited home for supper.”
“Tiger—”
I shut her up with a hand pressed aginst her mouth. “Poor joke. They haven’t decided anything yet. We’re supposed to mount up and go with them.” I sighed and patted the stud’s dusty shoulder. “Sorry, old man.”
Mustering what energy I had left (the Hanjii are merciless when it comes to tormenting those they believe are weak), I sprang up into the blanketed saddle and leaned down to offer a hand to Del. It took all I had not to fall out of the saddle as she swung up behind me.
Her hands, clasping my waist, were ice-cold.
For that matter, so were mine.
Eight
Hanjii women, like Hanjii men, believe scarification enhances beauty. I’ve seen the results before and therefore can afford to be a bit blasé about them; Del, who hadn’t, reacted much as I’d expected: in horror and disgust. But, thank valhail, also in utter silence.
The women go barebreasted to show off the designs spiraling around their breasts, each line dyed bright crimson. Like the men, they wear rings in their noses, but plain silver ones; women don’t earn the colors of rank through the same system. Their rank is earned through marriage or concubinage, and it’s only after they’ve achieved one or the other that they undergo the scarification ritual.
You can always tell a Hanjii woman who’s still a virgin because her dark skin is smooth and unmarred, her nose free of silver. For a man like me, who prefers unblemished women, it’s easy to overlook the older women with their scars and dye and nose-rings and look instead to the younger ones. But there is a problem: the Hanjii believe no woman should remain a virgin past the age of ten, which leaves the unblemished girls very young indeed.
And I’ve never thought much of bedding babies.
“I feel overdressed.” Del’s whisper crept over my shoulder to my ear, and I grinned. She was. Hanjii women wear only a brief linen kilt; Del’s tunic and my borrowed burnous covered almost all of her.
Which I preferred, in the middle of a Hanjii camp.
“Keep your hood up,” I advised, and was pleasantly surprised to hear silence in return. The girl was catching on.
We were escorted by all forty members of the warrior party through the flock of dusty sheep (sheep being the tribe’s primary source of food; the second being people) to a yellow hyort at the very center of the circular encampment. The Hanjii don’t call them hyorts, but I couldn’t think of the proper term. There we were told to dismount, which Del and I did with alacrity.
Gold Ring hopped off his horse and disappeared inside the hyort. When he came back out he was flanked by a man whose hide was liberally scarred and dyed with colors of every desert shade: vermilion, ocher, amber, verdigris, carnelian, sienna, and many more. His nose-ring was a flat plate of gold flopping down against his upper lip; difficult to eat, drink or talk, I thought, but then you don’t argue with a Hanjii who thinks he’s beautiful.
Besides, this man was the shoka himself.
Before anyone could say anything, I jerked Singlestroke from the sheath and knelt, pressing callused knees against hot sand, and carefully set my sword in front of the shoka. The sunlight flashing off the blade was blinding. I squinted. But didn’t move again.
A dozen or so knives came out of the closest belts, but no one moved to strike. Properly obeisant, I waited, head bowed, then—judging the homage time sufficent—I rose and walked around to the right side of the stud, unlacing the largest pouch.
I pulled the two squalling sandtiger cubs from it, carried them back to the shoka, and bent to dump them at his sandaled feet.
“A gift.” I spoke in Desert. “For the shoka of the Hanjii, may the Sun shine on his head.”
I heard Del suck in a shocked and outraged breath—they were her pets, after all—but she wisely kept her mouth shut. I stood before the chieftain of the Hanjii and hoped her Northern gods thought highly of her, since she spoke to them so often. The whole enterprise was a risk. I’d heard others had managed to buy their way out of a festival fire with gifts, but no one could predict what might catch the eye—and therefore the clemency—of a Hanjii shoka.
The cubs rediscovered one another and began rolling around in the sand, growling and shrieking and generally doing a first-rate job of sounding fierce—if a trifle ineffective. The shoka stared down at them a long moment, as did everyone else. I watched his face instead of the cubs, holding my breath.
He was an older man, most likely an old man; it was impossible to gauge his age with certainty. In the Punja the youth gets baked out of a face very quickly, and I’ve seen thirty-year-olds who looked fifty. (Or older.) This warrior had a good thirty or forty years on me, I thought, which meant he was especially dangerous. You don’t live to the age of sixty or seventy here without learning a few nasty tricks. Especially among the Hanjii.
He glared down at the cubs, dark forehead furrowed so that graying black brows knitted together over his blade of a nose. The Hanjii are not a pretty race, with all their scars and dyes and nose-rings, but they are impressive. And I was dutifully impressed.
Abruptly the shoka bent and scooped up one of the cubs, ignoring its outraged grunts and shrieks of protest. He peeled back the dark lips to examine its—his—forming fangs, then carefully spread each paw and felt the buds on each of the immature claws. Black eyes went to the string of claws around my neck, then to the scars on my face.
He grunted. “The shoka has heard of a dancer called the Sandtiger.” Unaccented Desert, though he used the Hanjii habit of referring to himself as a third person. “Only the Sandtiger would ride in the desert with cubs in a pouch on his horse.”
High praise, from a Hanjii. Grudging respect. (Grudging because the Hanjii consider themselves the toughest tribe in the desert; while they admire courage in others, they hate to admit others possess the attribute). I was surprised he recognized me, but said nothing about it. Instead, I looked back at him gravely. “He is indeed the Sandtiger.”
“The Sandtiger has given the Hanjii a great gift.”
“The gift is deserved.” Careful intonation: enough ne
gligence to emphasize the reputation of the Hanjii; enough conviction to win his approval. “The Sandtiger has heard of the ferocity of the Hanjii and wished only to add to the legend. Who but the shoka of the Hanjii would keep sandtigers in his camp?”
Who but the shoka of the Hanjii would want to? The cubs would prove very violent pets, but if any tribe was a match for them the Hanjii were. I’d let the shoka worry about it, although most likely he’d be delighted with their ferocity.
The old man smiled, showing resin-blackened teeth. “The shoka will share aqivi with the Sandtiger.” He shoved the cub at Gold Ring and disappeared within the hyort.
“Reprieve,” I muttered to Del; it wouldn’t do to let the others see me speaking to her, since a woman is beneath general conversation. “Come on.”
Silently, she followed me into the hyort.
The shoka turned out to be a very civil sort, generous with aqivi and compliments. By the time we finished the first bota we were good friends, telling one another what marvelous warriors we were and how no man could possibly beat us. Of course it happened to be true; had anyone ever beaten the shoka he’d have gone into the cooking pot, on his journey to the Sun. As for myself, had anyone beaten me, I wouldn’t be sharing a Hanjii hyort with a rainbow-scarred shoka and a blond-haired Northern woman who was smart enough to keep her mouth shut.
By the time we finished the second bota, we were done with trying to impress one another with our battle exploits, and the talk turned to women. This necessitated the embellishment of how many conquests we had made over the years; when we had first lost our virginity—he claimed at eight, I went him better and claimed six, until I remembered I was in his hyort and ‘admitted’ I was wrong—and methods. All this made me very conscious of Del sitting so silently by my side.
After a while I tried to turn the talk to another subject, but the shoka was perfectly content to ramble on for hours about all of his wives and concubines and how tiring it was keeping so many women satisfied, yet how fortunate he was that the Sun had blessed him with endless vigor and a magnificent tool.
Sword-Dancer Page 8