While Yocote taught religion, Culaehra taught staff-play, showing the women how they might use scythes and spades and pitchforks as weapons. Kitishane and Lua taught them archery, for they all knew the Vanyar would come back.
Return they did, a thousand strong. Their chariots darkened the valley; the hoofbeats of their horses filled the hills with thunder.
“Get you down and hide you behind the largest ruin in the village,” Yocote told Culaehra. “Kitishane, find archers to slay any who come near him! Culaehra, when their shaman comes forth to battle me, let him cast one spell, then step out and slay him. When he is dead, run back here, for the Vanyar will pursue. Run up that ravine, and archers will slay them from the evergreens on the slopes.”
Culaehra did not stay to question. He went to hide.
The Vanyar slowed to a halt beside the heap of ash that had once been chariots, recognizing the iron hoops that had bound the wheels and the iron rods that had been axles. Their anger was great, and they set up a deal of shouting and swearing in their barbarous tongue. Finally, one of them stepped forth wearing a robe made of a wolfs skin, with the head perched atop his own. His eyes were darkened with soot; scarlet symbols adorned his cheeks. He drew a wand from his belt, faced the hillside nearest the village and chanted. Points of light began to glitter in the air, moving about, gathering into a swarm that was pointed at the hillside.
An owl swooped from the sky, an owl abroad in daylight, and struck into the center of that glittering swarm like a hawk seizing a mouse. The points turned, darted, pierced the bird—and it exploded, sending showers of darts everywhere. Several struck the Vanyar shaman, who cursed.
Now was the time. Culaehra leaped out, hoping that Yocote was readying his next spell, and ran at the Vanyar, sword swinging. The warriors saw and shouted, whipping their horses into a run. The shaman turned, stared, then began to gesture and chant.
Culaehra struck. The sword hummed as it bit, and the shaman screamed; then something exploded inside him and he fell dead.
Culaehra stared, not understanding. Then he heard the massed shout of fury, glanced up to see the Vanyar charging down at him, remembered the plan, turned, and ran.
The very earth exploded beneath the Vanyar's wheels. Gouts of dirt shot high into the air. Chariot after chariot overturned; others slammed into the gaping holes in the ground and jarred to a halt. Horses screamed, rearing to avoid the blasting dirt and kicking over the chariots behind them. But a hundred chariots swerved around the disaster and kept coming, converging on Culaehra as he darted into the mouth of the ravine.
The walls narrowed quickly. Chariot slammed into chariot; axles broke, oaken sides cracked. Cursing, fifty Vanyar climbed from the wreckage and set off after Culaehra, who darted far ahead, but the sun glittered off his bronzen armor, showing him clearly. The Vanyar followed, roaring anger.
Arrows sprang from the hillsides. Intent on their prey, the Vanyar failed to see them until points pierced their throats and shafts sprang from their chests. The survivors turned, roaring, to charge the hillside—and flights from the other slope took them in the back. At least a dozen living men turned to flee, but more shafts struck, and not one of them survived.
On the plain, the earth was still exploding around and under the Vanyar. Finally, a poor remnant of the host turned and ran, chariots rattling over the valley and out along the riverbank.
On the hillside Kitishane cried, “Enough!” and Yocote nodded, lowering his arms.
“Lomallin has borrowed power from the Creator to win us this day,” he cried out to the villagers. “Let all see that Lomallin has greater power than Bolenkar!” Then he turned away—and tottered, nearly fell.
As he slept, villagers moved among the Vanyar, slaying those too badly injured to live and calling Culaehra to tend to those who might. He disarmed those who still bore axes and fought one or two who were not yet badly hurt. He took a few cuts on his arms where Agrapax's armor did not protect him, but disarmed them all, then set those who could still walk to carry litters bearing those too badly injured to bear their own weight. He sent them off along the riverbank with dire warnings of the fate that would befall any servant of Bolenkar's who came this way again. Then he turned to begin the long process of dragging the dead into the ravine. A few chariots were still intact, a few horses had not yet fled, so the task went more quickly than it might have.
When Yocote woke the next day, the ravine was filled with Vanyar dead. He looked down upon them and scowled. “We cannot have them lying unburied; it will bring disease.” So again he chanted, and with a roar the sides of the ravine caved in, burying the slain under ten feet of earth. When the dust had settled, the astounded villagers found themselves staring down at sloping, raw hillsides with a broad, flat field between.
“Sow this field with gorse,” Yocote bade them, “and let no one build or farm there for twenty years. Call it 'Culaehra's Reaping.' “
But they did not—they called it “Yocote's Reach.”
At last the companions assembled to resume their journey. Temla came to thank them, with all the villagers behind her. “Be ready to run if the Vanyar come again,” Kitishane advised her, “but I think they will not. Still, post sentries on the hilltops for two years before you think yourselves once more safe.”
“Kitishane, we will,” Temla promised, but Alsa came up with half a dozen grim-faced women behind her, each bearing a staff in her hand and a Vanyar axe at her waist. “These women have lost both husband and children,” Alsa explained. “There is nothing for them here, no life to live. They wish to come with you and slay Vanyar.”
Yocote and Culaehra were startled, but Lua only nodded slowly, understanding. Kitishane recovered from her surprise and frowned. “You understand that the journey will be hard, and that we will give you training in the use of arms that will be harder still.”
“Anything! We will endure all gladly!” the tallest woman said. “Only give us Vanyar to kill!!” She was slender and hard-faced.
“Vira is ... dedicated to the cause,” Alsa said, her voice low.
Yocote stepped forward. “They will not always be Vanyar whom we fight. Bolenkar has many agents, of many different nations, even different races, for some among the elves and dwarfs and, aye, even the gnomes, have been suborned.”
“We will fight any who have wrought this grief upon us!” Vira snapped. “Take us with you, we pray!”
Kitishane nodded slowly. “Illbane told us we must gather forces to throw against Bolenkar's armies. You shall be the first. Come.”
They found two more chariots, and the women rode three to a car. Off they went down the river road. The companions turned to wave farewell to the villagers, who sang an outsong, waving—but Vira and her women did not look back even once.
They avoided the Vanyar horde by taking to the ridges, but found other hill tribes beset by the invaders. They fought and slew these Vanyar squadrons, shamanry against violence, sword against axes—and Vira and her women made sure there were no survivors to carry tales back to the main horde. In every village a few more farmers or herdsmen joined them, to learn fighting and take revenge for the deaths of loved ones—and though the tale of their prowess did not run back to the Vanyar horde, it ran through the hills, so that even in villages that had not been attacked, there were young men and women who asked to go with them. Their progress was slow, for they needed to pause daily for instruction in fighting, and for practice—but they trended steadily southward, and as the first hint of summer came, they found the great river, as Illbane had told them they would. They traded with the riverfolk—Vanyar axes for small sailing boats, then more axes for lessons in their use.
They sailed southward with the current. Now and again river pirates would put out from shore, paddling fast to catch them, but a few waterspouts beneath their boats made most of them change their minds. A few righted their craft and came on with renewed determination; they turned and fled in horror when a monstrous creature with long and flailing arms
emerged from the water. They could have paddled right through it, of course—but they did not know that.
Some of the village folk came out in peace and asked to join the company, for the tale of the hero and his companions who fought against the Vanyar and all the evils of the world was running before them. By the time they came to the river junction, they led a fleet.
The people who had built a city at the joining of the rivers sent their own fleet out to demand tribute of those who wished to pass. Kitishane explained the importance of their mission; Culaehra stood by, smiling brightly as he whetted his sword, and the men and women in the other boats gradually drifted to surround the tax ships, axes and scythes much in evidence. The tax collector decided the companions' mission was too important for interference and bade them go in peace. Yocote responded by offering to trade for food, and the collector settled down to haggle. By the time they drifted into the eastbound river, they had full cargoes of food—and a dozen recruits from the city.
They crossed the inland sea, but there they disembarked and began to march again. They had an army behind them, everyone laden with provisions—but when the grass became sparse and the living trees gave way to dead, many of them began to have second thoughts.
Then even sparse grass ended, the last blasted trunk fell behind, and they found themselves facing a land of baking heat, of naked rock and baked mud. The troop drew up in a line to stare in dismay. Culaehra turned with a frown. “Bolenkar's hold is far from here; it lies across this wasteland,” he said. “I will blame no one who does not wish to risk his life in crossing this—but I do mean to go. If you wish to come with me, step forward. If you do not, remain, and have a camp ready to give us succor if we come back again.” He paused, looking from one end of his little army to the other. At last he said, “Who comes?”
Chapter 24
Everyone stepped forward. Everyone came.
Culaehra stood staring at them in disbelief . Finally he said, “Do you know what you do? This is such a journey as may kill us all without ever sighting an enemy!”
“We know,” Vira said. “Our lives have no purpose otherwise. At least let us die with a chance of finding our enemy.”
Culaehra looked up and down the line, noticing all over again the scars, the hardness in the eyes. Vira and her villagers were not the only ones who had suffered from people who had listened to Bolenkar's notion of good living through others' pain. None had come who had any ties to keep them back. All had either had loved ones torn from them by bandits, like Vira, or were outcasts, like himself.
“They are faithful, warrior,” Kitishane told him.
Culaehra nodded. “So be it, then. There was a pond half a mile back. Did you all fill your waterskins?”
Everyone nodded.
“We shall camp here and rest,” Culaehra told them, “for I do not trust this heat. When the sun hides its face, we will march.”
When the sun went down, night fell with a suddenness that surprised them. They struck camp, drowned their cook-fires, and strode out into the desert a hundred strong. Within the hour it was almost cool.
They marched all that night, then camped during the day. Yocote came up to Culaehra and said, “I sense no water, hidden or open. I have cast bones and read omens, but I see no hint of moisture during our next march.”
Culaehra nodded and turned to Kitishane. “Tell them all not to drink unless you command it.”
Kitishane stared. “Why me?”
“Because left to myself, I would drink too frequently or too sparingly, but never what is needed. You have the feel for it— you tally the water.”
They marched again when night had fallen, and Kitishane called out three swallows each hour, then called when the hour was up. When the night was darkest, when the chill was almost uncomfortable, Vira let out a cry. The troop stopped; Culaehra turned to see. She was pointing off into the distance. Culaehra looked where she was pointing but could see nothing. He ran over to her. “What do you see?”
“Blobs of white approaching, and they seem to drift above the desert floor!”
“Ghosts! Ghosts!” Scarcely a whisper, it ran through the ranks.
“Form a circle, spears outward!” Culaehra barked. “Whatever it is, it shall find us thorny!”
They scurried to form up, taking heart merely from the action and the notion that they were ready. When everyone was in place, though, they all turned to stare into the darkness, waiting for some sight of the ghosts.
There they came, bobbing white shapes high off the sand, even as Vira had said! But as they came closer, Yocote cried, “They are not ghosts—they are men! But Heaven alone knows what manner of beasts they ride!”
“Have arrows nocked,” Kitishane called, “but do not draw or loose unless I bid you do so. They may be friends.” But she did not sound very hopeful.
The strangers were almost upon the little troop before the riders drew rein and the northerners could see the shape of their mounts. They were tall, long-necked, long-legged, gangly creatures whose backs rose in humps. The riders sat in saddles strapped atop those humps, swathed in loose robes that would have been white if they had not been so filled with sand. They wore cloth about their heads, held in place with circlets of rope. They were sunburned and bearded. In the center of the band the tall mounts wore small curtained huts instead of saddles. Swords glittered in the hands of the men; there were no women or children in sight.
The two bands stared at one another in mutual hostility, each line bristling with weapons—but each side also uncertain.
“They cannot be enemies,” Kitishane finally said, “or they would have attacked.”
Culaehra nodded, then stepped forward, transferring his sword to his left hand and holding up his right. “Peace!”
“Culaehra!” Kitishane gasped, then held her breath, for one of the riders nudged his beast forward, transferring his sword to his left hand and holding up his right in imitation. “Solam!”
“Could that be their word for peace?” Lua asked.
“Likely enough.” Culaehra kept his eyes on the rider's face, trying to look friendly. “What do we do now, Kitishane?”
“We try to talk with them,” Yocote answered. He stepped forward, holding up his right palm, and called out a string of syllables his companions did not recognize.
A man in the second rank of riders looked up in surprise, then moved his beast forward beside the leader's. He called out a question in a foreign language—foreign to his own people, too, judging from the looks of surprise they gave him.
But it was not terribly foreign to Yocote. There was gladness and relief in his voice as he called back to the second rider; his friends started as they heard him end with the name “Bolenkar.” The rider seemed startled, too, and replied with considerable force and energy. The companions recognized the word “Bolenkar” again.
Yocote replied with a broad smile, then turned to his companions and said, “He is their shaman. They, too, are enemies of Bolenkar. He has given me a proverb of their people: “ 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' ”
“Why then, we are most assuredly friends!” Culaehra said fervently. “What is our friend's name, and how is it they have come riding upon us?”
Yocote turned and spoke to the shaman. He replied at some length, and as he spoke, Yocote's face became darker and darker. When the man was done, Yocote returned a brief comment, then turned to his own people. “His name is Yusev, and he is shaman of the Tribe of Dariad. They came upon us because they sighted us in the distance, and it is their way to ride toward trouble, not to flee it.”
Culaehra nodded vigorously. “A sound policy.”
“Yes, so long as they do not make trouble where there was none.” Kitishane frowned. “But what sent them riding across the desert in the darkness?”
Yocote turned to ask, and the dialogue between himself and the riders' shaman went more or less as follows, as he translated it for his friends:
Yocote: “How is it you ride i
n the darkness?”
Yusev: “Because in this merciless desert, it is too hot to ride in the day.”
Yocote: “So I thought; it is what has sent us abroad by night. But why do you ride at all?”
Yusev: “To find pasture for our flocks. It is our way; we are nomads because the pasturage is scarce. When our animals have eaten all the grass in one place, we must go to another.”
Yocote: “I am amazed that you can find grass at all in this wasteland.”
Yusev: “We know where the grass grows and where water lies; this knowledge has been given from parent to child for many generations. Now, though, many water holes are drying up, and the palms about them die. The grass becomes brown and sere, then turns to powder and blows away. The desert is spreading, even as it did in the days of Dariad the Defender, and we who eke out a living at its edge must needs go farther and farther to find pastures.”
Yocote: “A sad tale, and certainly reason enough to travel. You ride very quickly.”
Yusev: “We ride to escape the soldiers of Gormaran.”
Yocote: “Gormaran! Do they chase you, then?”
Yusev: “They hunt us. They have not yet found our trace, and we mean to see they do not.”
Yocote: “What have you done, that they should hunt you?”
Yusev: “We exist. That is all the reason they need to hunt down all the Peoples of the Wind, all the nomads like us. Bolenkar has sent his armies out to build strongholds around each oasis, denying us water to sustain life and the pasturage that grows by water. Thus we are driven to the desert's rim, where the Gormarani can find us more easily. Those whom they catch, they slay. They mean to exterminate all those of us who wander freely over the desert.”
Yocote: “I can see that; free people are threats to those who would rule everybody. Do they mean for none of your people to survive?”
Yusev: “Some, if you can call it survival—or if you can call them still the People of the Wind. Those who give up heart, those who weary of living in fear for the lives of their spouses and children, are welcome to go to the forts to live—if they swear allegiance to Gormaran and take up the worship of Bolenkar. Then the soldiers give them food and allow them water to grow grass, so that they may pasture their flocks. The women learn to grow food, like the farmers who surround the eastern cities; the men are taken into Bolenkar's army. Little Gormaranis are springing up all over the desert as the People No Longer of the Wind build houses of mud brick around the strongholds and study to become city dwellers.”
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