Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  “Come with me. Tell me what else you require.”

  PART TWO

  Upstream Passages

  XVII

  Kinship

  Tsem roared and swung a stool at one of the swordsmen, caught the bright edge of slicing metal on the wood. The sword snapped with a metallic cry and the Mang echoed it as the half Giant’s makeshift weapon thudded into his chest. He joined his fellow on the floor of the yekt, wheezing.

  For an instant there was calm, in which Hezhi desperately tried to assess the situation.

  “Princess!” Tsem growled, glancing toward her, but only for an instant, for another warrior stood in the yekt, menacing them. Ngangata, his face spattered with blood, held a throwing axe in each hand, his expression that of a caged predator, driven to fury. All told, three Mang lay on the floor, two unmoving, one clutching his chest and grimly working to regain an upright stance. A fourth warrior stood just inside the doorway of the yekt, and Hezhi could see several more just outside. She recognized two of them; the one whom Tsem had just battered with the stool was Chuuzek, the surly tribesman who had met her the day before; one of the men outside was his companion, Moss.

  The interior of the yekt was in total disarray; only Perkar seemed unchanged, still pale with unnatural sleep.

  “Tsem, what is happening?”

  “Treachery,” Ngangata snapped, loudly enough for those outside to hear. “Though Brother Horse promised us hospitality, his kin seem bent on dishonoring his name.”

  “There is no honor in harboring monsters,” Chuuzek gasped, already up on one knee. Tsem stepped quickly forward and slapped the man’s broad face with the half-curled back of his hand, and Chuuzek sprawled back, spitting blood. A cloth bandage on his head, caked with old blood, began to dampen with new wet redness as well.

  Moss stepped into the doorway. “Chuuzek! Stop!” he shouted, the first time Hezhi had heard the young man raise his voice. Chuuzek, fumbling for a knife at his belt, ceased, and instead scooted back against the wall of the yekt.

  Moss took another step in, eyes intent on Hezhi. “There is no need for this,” he asserted. “These friends of yours need not die.”

  “So far we aren’t the ones dying,” Ngangata remarked. Hezhi had never seen him in such a state, either. He was normally so mild, deflecting insults or ignoring them.

  “It’s not to you that I am speaking, Brush-Man,” Moss replied.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Hezhi groaned, and then more firmly, “Get out of this house. All of you, go away!”

  Moss frowned. “I would not have chosen this,” he said. “My cousin acted hastily, but his motives were pure. You must come with us.”

  “I must do nothing,” Hezhi snarled. “Yesterday you spoke of hospitality. What did you say? ‘I’m only sorry the hospitality of this camp was violated.’ Fine words, but I see now which hole they issued from. Not from your mouth, that much is certain.”

  Chuuzek stirred again angrily.

  “Stand back up, little man,” Tsem growled. “I will break your neck.”

  “You cannot break all of our necks,” Chuuzek returned.

  “He does not have to!” came an angry voice from outside. “Move out of my way, all of you, you worthless carrion dogs!”

  Hezhi saw the look of consternation, quickly mastered, flash over Moss’ face. Reluctantly he stepped back as a burst of shouting from outside was followed by sudden silence. Brother Horse shouldered into the tent, swept furious eyes over the scene. His short, spindly legs and wizened body no longer seemed in the least comical or kindly; the old man bore his rage in every angle of his stance, spat it in each terse syllable. The wolf she had seen inside of him now shone out like a candle through a red paper lantern.

  “Get out of here,” he said to Chuuzek softly. “Get out of my house, and take these piles of buzzard dung with you.” He kicked one of the dead or unconscious men with the toe of his boot.

  “Now we see,” Chuuzek said. “We see the great man cares more for his dun’cheen friends than he does for his own people.”

  “I care,” Brother Horse gritted, “more for the ways of the Mang—the Mang, you whelp of a cur and a turd—than I do for your insolent disregard of all we know. I promised these people hospitality, and you steal that from me, you thief. You horse thief!”

  Which was about the worst thing one Mang could call another. Raiding and robbing others was war—and acceptable—but stealing from one who gave you hospitality was one of the worst offenses conceivable.

  “Perhaps you want her for yourself, old man.”

  Brother Horse ignored Chuuzek. He swept his gaze over Tsem, Ngangata, Perkar, and Hezhi. “Are you injured, child? Has any one of you been hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Hezhi answered. “I don’t know about Tsem and Ngangata. I just … awoke.”

  “We are not injured,” Ngangata answered. “No true harm has been done … yet.”

  “No harm!” Chuuzek roared. “My cousins lie there thus, and you say no harm has been done?”

  “They begged for their fate,” Brother Horse answered venomously. “Were they—and you—not protected by the same hospitality that protects these others, I would have you all on the frame, screaming for days on end.”

  “I would spit in your face.”

  “Brave talk,” Brother Horse answered him. “You have never been on the frame; I have.” He turned to Moss. “You had my answer yesterday. You may seek to turn all of this on your rock-brained cousin, but I know better.”

  “I warned you,” Moss said quietly. “I respect you greatly, and I understand your position. If you had let us take her, you would not have been dishonored; the onus would have been shouldered only by Chuuzek and myself. You need only have been too long engaged elsewhere. As it is …” He signed with his hand and four more warriors crowded up to the doorway.

  Brother Horse shook his head. “You would slay me, in my own house, during the Ben’cheen? You are not Mang.”

  “We do what must be done,” Moss answered. “We will bear the dishonor. Please don’t make us bear the responsibility of your death as well, honored one.”

  “The warriors of my clan are just behind you. Make another move, and you shall wear a coat of arrows.”

  Moss smiled grimly. “You mistake your own family. These warriors have agreed to stand aside. They will not aid me, but neither will they aid you. I have spoken with them all.”

  “Yes, well, I have spoken with them all, as well, and I told them to answer you thus. I wanted to see how far down this wrong, waterless trail you would stumble. Now I know.”

  Hezhi wished she could have laughed at the sudden understanding on Moss’ face, but her heart was still thudding too painfully in her chest. Too much happening, too much. First the mountain and then, with no letup, this.

  The green-eyed man seemed to sag slightly, but then he recovered himself.

  “You will regret this,” he said sincerely. Not with heat, but with a kind of sadness.

  “I regret much in my life,” Brother Horse murmured. “This will not greatly add to my burden, I’m sure.”

  “In that you are mistaken,” Moss assured him.

  Brother Horse merely shrugged and slapped his hands. Men came from behind and seized Moss and his kin roughly.

  “Watch them,” Brother Horse called to his men. “Disarm them but do them no harm. They are protected by my word, and I will not break that word.”

  Two men came in to get the bodies. Chuuzek managed to leave under his own power. Brother Horse grimly watched them go before turning to examine those he protected.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think things would go this far.”

  “You knew,” Hezhi stated.

  “Yes. I knew when I saw you with them in the desert. They meant to take you then, would have if I had not been present. Moss is honorable at heart, and thought to persuade me rather than slay me. It was a very near thing, though. Did you notice the way Chuuzek kept fondling
his sword-grip?” “No,” Hezhi admitted. “But I knew something was wrong.”

  “Something is very wrong,” Brother Horse agreed.

  “Thank you for your help,” Tsem said. “Thank you for protecting Hezhi.”

  Brother Horse eyed the half Giant. “I had no choice, so there is no need to thank me.”

  “I think you did have a choice,” Ngangata disagreed. “Moss was right; had you turned your back, they could have taken us and no one would have faulted you.”

  Brother Horse grinned tightly. “We work to keep the good opinion of our elders, but none here is my elder. That leaves me in the unfortunate position of having to stay clean in my own eyes.”

  “They would have killed Perkar,” Ngangata answered, his tone still conveying thanks.

  “They would have killed you all, all but me,” Hezhi added.

  Tsem nodded. “They must have known you were ill and come to take you while you lay asleep.”

  “Ill?”

  “Princess, you have lain as dead for a day.”

  That long? But it had seemed even longer.

  “She was not dead,” Brother Horse said. “You bled into the lake, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed. “Yes. I wish I could have been with you, to help you.”

  Hezhi held her hands up. “You were here when we needed you most, I think. What should we do now?” She surveyed her companions helplessly.

  “Princess, that is your decision,” Tsem quietly responded.

  She thought that Brother Horse or Ngangata would disagree—hoped they would—but to her surprise they did not, only watched her expectantly.

  “I …” She stared back at them. “I don’t know what to do. We can’t stay here anymore, though, can we?”

  Brother Horse pursed his lips. “I never anticipated any of this. I offered you a life in this village, with my people, and yet …”

  “We’ve been nothing but trouble to you,” Hezhi finished.

  The old Mang grimaced. “It’s this war, and something else, something Moss wouldn’t explain to me completely.”

  “He said I could bring peace.”

  “Yes, he told me that, as well, but wouldn’t explain how. I don’t think he knows.”

  “In any event, we have to leave,” Ngangata said. “We have to get Hezhi and Perkar away from here. They seem almost as bent upon killing him as upon snatching her.”

  “What do you mean?” Hezhi asked.

  “We were set upon by warriors out on the plains. They came to kill Perkar.”

  Brother Horse waved his hand. “They are Mang, he is a Cattle-Man, and we are at war.”

  “No, it was more than that. They were seeking him specifically, and no other.”

  “It’s because Perkar knows where we should go,” Hezhi broke in suddenly. “Karak told him.”

  Brother Horse stretched a grim smile. “What do you mean, ‘where you should go’?”

  “I … I don’t know,” Hezhi realized. “There is something I’m supposed to do, but I don’t know what.”

  “You learned this on the other side of the drum?”

  Hezhi nodded thoughtfully.

  “Well, let me warn you that if you have only the word of the Blackgod, then you have little worth trusting.”

  “He has only aided me,” Hezhi said.

  “When he set me to watch for you at Nhol?”

  “No, since then.”

  Brother Horse raised his eyebrows in surprise but did not inquire further.

  “He works for his own purposes, that much is certain,” Ngangata said. “But he helped us against the warriors on the plains, too. He seems to have cultivated a liking for our little family.”

  “How quickly do we have to leave?” Hezhi asked, mustering as much determination to put in her voice as she could.

  “Tonight would be best,” Brother Horse admitted sadly. “We can hold Moss and Chuuzek and the rest for a few days, give you an escort and a head start to wherever you are going. Beyond that, my own people will begin to rebel at the thought of holding their cousins captive. Young people these days don’t respect the old as they should.”

  Hezhi nodded solemnly. “Ngangata, can Perkar travel?”

  “Can you heal him?” the halfling countered.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Well,” the half man considered. “We can tie him to a horse, but that will slow us. It would be better if he could ride.”

  “Put some distance between yourselves and the village first,” Brother Horse advised. “Then I believe I can show Hezhi what to do. She has the power now.”

  He was looking at her strangely, deeply, and Hezhi understood that the old man could see what the others could not, the change in her.

  “You will go with us?” she asked him.

  “I will accompany you long enough to help with that. Afterward … well, there look to be many affairs that need my attention.”

  Hezhi took a deep breath. “Running again. Always running.”

  Tsem moved up to stroke her hair, and his tenderness awoke buried tears. She did not shed them, but they crowded into her throat and threatened to cut off her air.

  “Well,” she gasped, “where shall we run? I know nothing of these lands.” Her pleading gaze fastened first on Brother Horse and then on Ngangata.

  “North, perhaps,” Brother Horse muttered. “North, across the Changeling, or perhaps east. Away from all of this.”

  Hezhi sat on her mat. “Away. At first it seemed that just leaving Nhol was ‘away.’ Now … what lies north and east?”

  “Ah … plains, forests, mountains. North, Human Beings are scarce. East are the Stone Leggings and other tribes. Giants northeast eventually. Beyond that I don’t know.”

  “We can’t cross the Changeling,” Ngangata stated, his voice solid with certainty.

  “No. No, of course.” Images of distant lands where no one knew or cared about Hezhi faded as soon as they formed. Was there such a place, anyway? A place where her blood would merely lie quiet and the River was not even a legend? Probably not.

  “We’ll go where Perkar said to,” Hezhi mumbled. “Where the Blackgod said to.”

  “Where?”

  “We’ll go to the mountain.”

  Ngangata frowned. “Princess, I—”

  Hezhi stared at him, suddenly angry. “I know. I know he flows from there. But that is the only compass we have at the moment. If any of you has a better suggestion, tell me or decide for me. But if you want me to decide …”

  Ngangata shifted uncomfortably. “The war is there. We would only be plunging into the heart of things.”

  Brother Horse cleared his throat. “I know of a camp, up in the White Crown Mountains. It should be far from any such troubles.”

  “If you know of it,” Hezhi retorted, “it is certain that other Mang know of it. Besides, this gaan seems to be able to smell me wherever I am. He knew to send Moss and Chuuzek here.”

  “That could be coincidental, Princess,” Tsem pointed out.

  “No. They came straight to where I was, in the cliffs. I was in a closed-off canyon, wasn’t I, Brother Horse? What reason would they have for going in there?”

  “They might have seen you on the plain, wondered who you were,” the old man muttered.

  “You don’t believe that,” Hezhi answered.

  He shrugged his bony shoulders. “No.”

  “If we go out into the desert and hide, they find us without you and your kin to protect us. If we go back to Nhol, the same fate that I fled awaits me. The same, too, if I try to cross the River. Twice now I have been told to go the mountain. That would at least put us in Perkar’s homeland, where his people might protect us, would it not?”

  Ngangata nodded wearily. “Yes. But that is a hard journey, by land, and we have to cross the country where the war is being fought.”

  “One of you decide, then,” she said.

  Tsem snorted. “You great men, you horsemen, you hu
nters. My princess has lived in these lands for half a year, you for your whole lives. Can’t either of you think of anything?”

  Brother Horse scratched his chin. “Only that she is right,” he admitted.

  “That’s all?” Tsem snapped—audibly, as his nut-size teeth cracked together on his last syllable.

  “Listen, Giant,” Brother Horse suddenly blazed. “She is not a princess here. There are no armies waiting to march at her command. There are no kings on the huugau. Would that there were and I were one. I would surround her with my soldiers and a wall of stone and make her safe. But this is Mang country, do you understand? I have no soldiers, only kinfolk, and I have to spend as much time trying to please them as they to please me. And if I tell them to do something they are set hard enough against, they will ignore me. Then I lose face and power, and the next time they listen to me even less. Those men you killed today have relatives in my own clan. They will not forget you, or her, or me, for not giving you up. I have few enough years left to live, and I had hoped to live them in comfort, but that dream withers in the sun now. So don’t you upbraid me for not being able to do what no man can do!”

  Tsem’s eyes widened with startlement, but his face stayed set. “I’ll kill anyone else who tries to touch her, too,” he said. “So you better help us get away from here, before I have to break more of your precious kinsmen and make your old age even more uncomfortable.”

  “Tsem,” Hezhi said softly. “Hush. He has already helped us, don’t you understand?”

  “No. I don’t understand why they can’t let you be. You’ve already … we’ve already …” Tsem suddenly bent and ground his face into the wall, shuddering.

  Hezhi’s gut wrenched. “Tsem!”

  The Giant moaned and thrust his hand back, motioning her away.

  “He must have been wounded,” Ngangata muttered. “I didn’t see—”

  “No,” Tsem croaked. “Not wounded.”

  Hezhi understood then. The half Giant was crying.

  “Please,” she said to Ngangata and Brother Horse. “Please get the horses together, or whatever. If we have to leave, we have to leave. But could the two of you make the arrangements?”