by Greg Keyes
The singer knelt on a flat stone, eyes closed, face rapt. Nearby stood his mount, a familiar tawny mare. The song itself was in Mang, and she caught the sense of a single verse before the young man opened his eyes and noticed her.
“Hard Wind
Sister with iron hooves
Together we shall travel steppes
That no man nor mount has seen
Courage will be my saddle
And your bridle shall be my faith in you …”
That was when Raincaster became aware of her and stopped, his dark blush visible even in the twilight.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she apologized. “That was beautiful.”
“Ah,” he murmured, looking down at the sand. “Thank you.”
“I have heard your people sing to their mounts before, but never with such silvery throats.”
“You flatter me,” Raincaster demurred.
Hezhi lifted her hand in farewell. “I will leave you,” she said.
“No—please, I was finished.”
“I just heard you singing and wondered who it was, that’s all.”
Raincaster nodded again, and Hezhi hesitantly took that as an invitation to stay for a moment.
“I still do not fully understand the bond between you and your mounts,” she went on cautiously. “I love Dark; she is a wonderful horse, but I can’t say that I feel she is kin.”
“That’s because she isn’t,” Raincaster told her. “She can’t be.” She knew immediately he meant no offense but was only stating a simple fact. Still, she pursued it.
“Could you explain?”
He shrugged. “In the beginning the Horse Mother gave birth to two children, a horse and a man. Both were Mang, and neither of us ever forgets. Our lines have been separate, of course, but the kinship is always reckoned, always kept track of. We share our souls; in some lives we are born as horses and in others as Humans. But inside we are the same.” He looked at her curiously. “Do you not feel kinship with the goddess who dwells within you?”
Hezhi remembered the wild ride back from the mountain, the sensation of being joined to the mare. “Yes,” she admitted. “But I still do not think it is the same.”
“No,” Raincaster said, his voice very soft. “The old people say that when the perfect rider and mount are joined, they are not reborn amongst us. They go on to another place, where they become a single being. That must be more what you feel.” His voice had a wistful tone.
“Maybe,” Hezhi allowed. “We are as one at times, but mostly I do not notice her.”
“It is a rare gift, to be a gaan. You should be proud.”
“I am,” Hezhi assured him. “Have you never considered—” She paused. “You are such a fine singer. Are you not a gaan?”
Raincaster turned to his mount and began brushing at her coat. “There are two sorts of singers. There are two sorts of songs. I do not have the sort of mansion that gods can live in.” He could not hide the disappointment in his tone.
“Oh.” She searched for something else to say. “You have the gift to make beauty,” she offered finally.
“It is a small gift,” he replied, still not facing her.
“No, it isn’t. I may have power—I may be a gaan—but it seems that all I ever do is destroy, never create. I could never sing so wonderfully as you.” And then she did stop, for she had embarrassed herself.
Raincaster turned toward her then, and a faint smile graced his handsome face. “Songs need not reach the ear to be heard and understood. Such music is not made, it simply is.” Then he turned back to Hard Wind, his horse. Hezhi waited another moment, then turned quietly to leave.
“But thank you for your praise,” Raincaster called after her. “It is important to me, though it shames me to show it.”
The night was growing colder, so Hezhi made her way back to the fire, though her heart felt warmer already. Finally, she seemed to have said the right thing to someone.
Three days later, Perkar found Tsem’s war club when they stopped to hunt. It was nearly perfect without finishing, a natural cudgel of black gum that rose almost to Perkar’s waist when stood on end. That night, around the fire, he showed the half Giant how to shape wood by charring it in the fire and scraping off the burnt part.
“It hardens the wood, as well,” Ngangata put in, watching over their shoulders. He had just returned from hunting, and instead of a piece of wood, he had returned with an antelope. Tsem nodded at them both. It was just dark, and the wolves Perkar had warned of were singing in the distance, accompanied by the occasional skirl of a tiger owl. The sky was cloudless, the air crisp enough that the fire felt good. A pattering of twin drums a hundred steps or so from camp were Brother Horse and Hezhi, teacher and pupil at their arcane studies. Perkar gathered that Hezhi was making rapid progress in her study of the world of gods—not surprising, since the blood of the most powerful god on earth flowed in her veins.
Tsem scraped enthusiastically at his club. He was clumsy, but the wood and the method of working it were forgiving. A simple but deadly weapon was taking shape in his hands.
“I remember my first sword,” Perkar told them. He felt quiet tonight. Not happy, but not crushed by the weight of the world, either. For once, he felt no older than his age. “Oh, I crowed about it. It was such a beautiful thing.”
“What became of it?” Tsem inquired.
“I … traded it for Harka.” He didn’t mention that the blade his father gave him, the blade made by the little Steel God Ko, now lay near the corpse of the first person he was responsible for killing. But at least his father’s blade had never itself been sullied by murder.
Perkar looked up in time to catch the warning glance Ngangata shot Tsem. Ngangata, trying to protect him again. Did they all think him so fragile?
Why shouldn’t they? His tantrums and sulking had given them ample cause to think so. He resolved to be stronger, take a more forceful role in the journey. After all, it was him the Crow God entrusted with the knowledge of what should be done.
“How much longer, Ngangata? Until we reach the mountain?”
Ngangata considered that. “If we keep this pace, don’t lose any horses, and all else goes well—two more months.”
“Two months?” Tsem asked incredulously, looking up from his work. “Won’t we walk off the edge of the world?”
Perkar and Ngangata grinned at that. “No. We could ride another ninety days beyond the mountain and still not find the end of the world.”
“What would we find?”
“I don’t know. Ngangata?”
“Balat, for many of those days. Balat is a very large forest indeed. Beyond that—Mor, the sweet-water sea. Mountains, forest, plains—finally, I hear, the great ocean. Beyond that, perhaps, the edge of the world, I don’t know.”
“How far have you been that way? I never asked.” Perkar drew his knife and began helping Ngangata dress his kill. The hard knot of anger in the half Alwa seemed to have smoothed somewhat. He seemed willing to speak casually to Perkar again, which had not been the case since his “raid” on the Mang camp.
“I’ve been to Mor, no farther.”
“I should like to see that someday,” Perkar said.
Ngangata didn’t look up from his task; his hands were bloody to the wrist as his knife worked efficiently at the carcass. “I would like to see Mor again,” he agreed, and Perkar smiled as the strain between them loosened further.
“Such a large world.” Tsem sighed.
“Yes, but two months gives us plenty of time to teach you how to be a warrior in it.”
“Two months until what?” Tsem asked suspiciously.
Perkar stopped what he was doing, raised his eyes to meet those of the Giant. “I … well, until we reach the mountain.”
“And we will have to fight there?”
Perkar spread his hands. “I honestly don’t know. But probably.”
“Why?”
Perkar felt a bit of his old confidence ret
urn, so that his words seemed only somewhat ridiculous rather than absolutely absurd.
“Well, Tsem, we’re going to kill a god, and they rarely take that lightly.”
Tsem’s enormous jaw worked furiously for a moment before he suddenly threw down the club and gazed fiercely at them. “Why haven’t I heard about this? What are you talking about? I thought we were trying to reach your people, Perkar, that we might live with them. I have heard nothing of slaying gods.”
Perkar realized his mistake, realized also that he needed badly to speak with Hezhi. Since his illness, he had been so occupied with his own fears and desires he had completely lost touch with the status of the group. Perhaps plans had even changed since he and Hezhi last talked; she was more firmly in charge than he was, more aware in some ways of what was going on. Perhaps the plans should change. Trusting Karak was a perilous thing, and though he had been convinced, at first, that what the Raven had laid out for them was possible, he was now skeptical again. Furthermore, what he had told no one—not even Ngangata—was that Hezhi was the essential ingredient in the scheme. At the headwaters of the Changeling, she—and only she—could slay the god: that was all he knew. But Karak had made it seem a simple thing, easily accomplished. All they had to do was get there.
That still wouldn’t be easy. The high plateau and mountains were dangerous, prowled by Mang and even more dangerous predators. And ahead of them was the war, where his own people fought and died against those of Brother Horse. How would the old man and his nephews react when they reached that point?
And Hezhi was willful. She might not agree to help, once he explained. But the longer he put off his explanation, the angrier she would be that he had kept it from her.
And there was Tsem, glaring at him, the consequence of his talking without thinking, of another stupid blunder.
“We haven’t talked this over yet, Tsem. Hezhi and I haven’t really discussed it, so as far as she knows, what she told you is true.”
“No. No, I remember her saying something about a mountain now, back in the yekt. That she chose that destination because of something you said. Yet she told me nothing about why.”
“She doesn’t know, perhaps.”
“I think she does,” Tsem muttered. “I think she’s trying to protect me again.”
Before Perkar could protest further, Ngangata softly replied. “Probably. These two have a habit of ‘protecting’ us, don’t they?”
“If you mean leaving us in the dark about their intentions, yes,” Tsem agreed. “Though that’s never made me feel very safe.”
Ngangata snorted and coughed a bitter chuckle. “No, me, either. Perkar, maybe you should talk to her. You are, after all, her kind.”
Perkar flushed scarlet. “You don’t have to remind me of how I once treated you. You know my opinion of the Alwat has changed.”
“We aren’t talking about that,” Tsem said softly. “You are two of a kind because you both think you bear the world on your shoulders.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about that.”
“No, I’ve never borne the world on my shoulders. Only Hezhi. That was the only burden I ever wanted, and I want it back.”
Ngangata had never looked up from what he was doing. Perkar understood what the Giant was saying—he had heard Ngangata say the same thing in different words. And Ngangata had steered the conversation on this bent. To remind him? Perkar resolved that he would tell Ngangata, at least, the whole truth as he knew it, next time he had a chance.
“I will talk to her,” Perkar said. “Together we’ll decide what to do.”
“I worry about decisions the two of you make.”
“By together I meant all of us,” Perkar clarified. “But I must speak to her first. Meanwhile, finish that club! No matter what we do, trouble seems to find us, and now that you’ve brought it up, I want to see you armed. Some enemies will flee us just at the sight of you, mark my words.”
He shot a glance at Moss when he said that and realized with a bare shock that their captive was awake, hearing everything they said. How long had he been awake? Had he heard Perkar’s ill-considered remark about godslaying?
Probably. The more reason not to let him go. When they reached the pastures of his people, they could give Moss into the keeping of someone else. Perhaps he could be traded to the Mang for captives. But he must not be allowed to return to the Mang gaan who sought Hezhi and report what he knew. Perkar would kill him first.
Moss smiled thinly, as if he understood that thought. Perhaps he saw something in Perkar’s eyes; but rather than fear, the smile held a hint of mockery.
“I’m going on watch,” Perkar said softly. “I’ll see the two of you in the morning.” Then, in Nholish, to Tsem: “Watch this prisoner, Giant. I don’t know what Hezhi has told you of him, but he is a terrible threat to her.”
“I know he sought her,” Tsem growled darkly. “I think I should blood my club on him when I’m done making it.”
“No.” Perkar sighed. “We’ve killed more than enough, and we’ll probably kill more before it’s done. No reason to do so when it isn’t really necessary.”
“I suppose.”
“Good night, Tsem. Be careful not to let the fire eat too deeply.”
Tsem looked up, black eyes caging bits of flame. “Just deep enough, I hope,” he replied.
Perkar put off his talk with Hezhi until the next morning. They were ascending onto the high plains the Mang named the Falling Sky, and the going alternated between troublesome and dangerous; not a good time for what might become a heated discussion.
When questioned about the name, Brother Horse explained how legend held that a chunk of heaven had cracked loose and plunged to earth. If so, their horses now climbed the eroded edges of that shard, beveled by time and wind into a stepped slope of banded sandstone. The going was easiest in the trenched furrows dug by long-dead streams, but it was midday before they found one of these broad enough and long enough to ease the constant upward stumbling into some semblance of normal traveling. Brother Horse explained that there were other, more established paths farther north but that they would risk meeting other Mang traveling there, especially now that news of the war was widespread; young, unproven warriors from every part of the Mang country would be streaming to earn honors for themselves in the mountains.
So they clattered up the dry streambed for another few leagues, until it broadened to vanishing, until dense black soil crept to cover the stone again, and they entered onto the spacious back of the Falling Sky.
“We will never be out of the shadows of mountains now,” Brother Horse told them, and it was true; they could see mighty ones on the north and west. Behind them a few trailed off, but it was the vastness of the lower steppes that struck Perkar. Though the last few days of their travel had been in hills, distance and scale crushed the most rugged of them into the imperial, awesome flatness that sheeted out and beyond the horizon, where sky and earth met in a confused haze of blue-green and brown.
Brother Horse reined his mount to a halt. “We’ll offer at this cairn to the lord of the Falling Sky,” he told them. Perkar nodded as he took in the vista they had just arrived upon. Despite the bordering giants, the high plains were, if anything, flatter than anywhere below them. It seemed not so much a piece of the sky as a place where the sky had lain for a time and crushed everything level. In fact, going back over what Brother Horse told him, that might have been what the old man meant. He had not lied to Tsem in claiming his Mang was less than perfect.
Brother Horse began chanting behind him, and pungent incense seasoned the wind. He thought about joining, but he didn’t know the song or the gods of this country. But soon! Despite it all, despite the dread he felt at facing his people with his crimes against them, the thought of his father’s pasture and the little, unambitious gods he knew—knew the songs for, the lineages of—sixty days, and he could be there. He would not be; actually going by his father’s damakuta would put them many days later g
etting to the mountain, days he somehow believed they could not afford. Still, the thought stirred him, not only with trepidation and sadness but also with joy.
He noticed that Hezhi had ridden out away from the rest, had her eye fixed somewhere westward. He urged T’esh toward her. To his vast surprise, Sharp Tiger followed. Since the time Perkar had adopted him, the horse had shown him, at best, disdain. When Yuu’han or Brother Horse led him, he would follow, but none was able to get upon his back. But now, as he trotted to join Hezhi, there was Sharp Tiger, two horse lengths behind—as if he wanted to hear what the two of them would say. Perkar wondered himself.
“What is that?” Hezhi asked, arm thrust out toward where the wind whipped a wall of dust along before it.
“That’s wind coming down from the mountains. It may have some rain in it. See the darkness behind?”
“I don’t like it,” Hezhi murmured. “It seems …” She trailed off. “Well. You rode over here for a reason, I know. You haven’t spoken to me in days.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking a lot, feeling sorry for myself.”
“What a surprise. You feeling sorry for yourself.”
“You’re angry.”
She flung her hair back over her shoulder and set her little mouth in a scowl. “What do you think you are doing with Tsem?”
“Tsem? He asked me to teach him—”
“How to fight, I know. But you shouldn’t have done it without asking me.”
“And why is that, Princess? It seems to me that you told Tsem he was no longer your servant. That he was free.”
“Maybe I did. I did. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have anything to say about him. I’ve known him since I was born. You barely know him at all.”
“I’m only doing what he asked. He wants to feel useful, Princess. He knows that you pity him, and it eats at his heart. Do you want to stop him from doing the one thing that might give him a sense of worth?”
“He said that? He thinks I pity him?”