by Jo Clayton
“Bramlet,” they said, “We’re only two. At least the beasts will be alive.” A day and a night and a day drifted past, and then another night. When the sun rose clear of the horizon, she started after her folk.
BRANN RODE a wild black werehorse down the mountain, black mane stinging her face, brother and sister melded into one, carrying her and the gear they’d salvaged from the gutted houses. Down the mountainside, going like the wind, Brann as wild and exhilarated as the great beast under her. Down the mountainside through the bright cool morning, lovely lustrous morning though Arth Slya was dead and lost. Day ought to weep, sun ought to lurk behind a thick weight of cloud, trees ought to droop and sigh, river to gloom and gray, but it was not so. And no more than day and mountain and sky could she mourn. She thrilled at the driving power of the great muscles between her legs, muscles fed as she was with the lives of wolves and coynos. She laughed aloud and laughed again when the werehorse bugled its delight.
Late that afternoon they came to the first of many cataracts. The werehorse stopped beside a storm-felled ash slowly rotting back into the earth, collapsed into brindle boarhounds after Brann swung groaning down, sore muscles protesting, chafed thighs burning. The hounds walked out of saddle and gear and trotted away. Brann stretched and groaned some more, then went through the gear, found the hatchet and went about collecting downwood for a fire, wobbling on legs that felt like wet noodles, splaying her knees to keep her thighs apart. When she had the fire going and the kettle dangling from an improvised tripod, she stripped off her clothing and found an eddy by the ash tree’s roots where she wouldn’t be swept away. She sat on a water-polished root, dabbling her feet in the river, watching the roughened redness inside her thighs fade to pink, the pink to the matte white of healthy skin. She’d burned her finger getting the kettle to hang properly from the tripod. The burn blister had dried and, as she watched, the dry skin cracked and peeled away leaving no sign at all of the burn. Some change, she thought. She slipped off the root, dunked herself all the way under, crawled out of the water, stretched her dripping body along the hard white wood of the ash tree’s trunk, the sun warm and welcome on her back and legs, dozing there until a hiss from the fire told her the tea water was boiling. She pulled her clothes back on, feeling a mild curiosity about when the children would return, a curiosity that faded as she made the tea.
She sat with the hot drinking bowl hugged between her hands, her face bent to the fragrant steam rising from the tea. Her father’s work, that bowl, with the goodness her father put in everything he made. She sipped at the tea, listening to the cries of the hunting hounds, wishing her father were there sitting beside her on the ash trunk. Sipped again, trying to wash away the lump in her throat, dismissing the horrors, thinking instead of the good times. When her father took his impling to his workshop with its smells of dry clay and wet clay, of powders and glaze mixes, cedar cabinets and oak tables, the whirring of wheels, thuds of the kicks that kept the wheels going, Immer’s humming, another apprentice’s sweet whistling, jokes tossed about, laughter, shouts-sounds and smells set as deeply into her as the thumps and clacking of her mother’s loom, her mother’s tuneless burring songs. Good times. When she shared her birthdays with ancient Uncle Eornis and he fed her cake and cider and told her the exciting scary stories she loved. Tough old man, should have lasted a dozen more years. Everyone in the Valley was making something special for him, she’d done an ink drawing of moonfishers in a scream fight. Her father spent two years on his gift. A das’n vuor pot and a hundred das’n vuor drinking bowls, one for each year of the old man’s life. He broke pot after pot until he was satisfied, broke bowl after bowl. Most of them looked fine to Brann, but he pointed out their imperfections, made her see them as he did, feel them, patient with her until she finally understood what he was talking about. And when he took the last bowls from the firing, he broke three, but wiped the fourth carefully and set it in her hands. She looked deep and deep into the black luster that seemed to drink the light, rejoicing in the shape that had the rightness of the Galarad Oak, or the Yongala dancing when Slya filled her, a rightness that whispered deep within. As if a light was kindled inside her, she knew why her father could judge so quickly and surely the worth of his work. Shine and whisper filling her, she felt as if she should hook her toes under something or she might just float away. Her Choice was made. More than anything in all the world, she wanted one day to make a thing as right as the bowl cradled in her hands. She gave it back to her father and sighed. He put it carefully into its nest of silk, then caught her up, lifted her high, swung round and round and round with her, laughing and proud, his spirits suddenly released as his labor was finished at last, astonished and enraptured by what his hands had made, rejoicing at her Choice. He might never do anything quite as splendid again and it was somehow fitting that his daughter marked it with the gift of her life, yet more fitting that his greatest work was born of love and celebration and not done for gold.
She refilled the bowl and gulped at the tea, burning her tongue with it, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back tears, “He can’t have it, I won’t let him, can’t have them,” remembering with helpless fury soldiers carrying things from her home, the chest with the das’n vuor pot, the chest with the hundred bowls, the Temueng pimush in the gilded helmet hovering over them with a hungry look, putting his hands on them, claiming them. “No!”
The hounds’ bellowing grew louder, closer. Brann put the bowl down, stood crouched, waiting.
A yowling, spitting black beast ran from the trees, swerved when he saw her, a malouch with claws that could strip the flesh from a tough old boar. He yowled again and switched ends, but the hound bitch was too fast for him, dodging the claw strike with a speed that blurred her shape into a brindle streak. She tore at his hind leg, sprang away again. As soon as Yaril distracted him, Brann leaped, slapped a hand against the side of his head. The malouch writhed around, his claws raking her arm, then he froze as she started the pull, a black statue of hate unable to move, unable to make a sound. Ignoring the blood and pain from her torn arm, Brann set her other hand on him. His life flooded into her, hot and raw, terrible and terrifying, waking in her that queasy pleasure that she hated but was starting to need. At last the malouch was a scrap of fur and flesh melting from between her hands.
Children again, Jaril and Yaril took Brann’s hands and the fire passed from her. She began to feel clean again though some of it remained with her; the malouch had clung to life with a fury that saddened and sickened her and she wanted to rid herself of everything she’d taken from him; she tried to hold onto the children, tried to force all of that stolen life out of her, but they melted and flowed through her fingers and flitted away to shimmer over the scatter of gear, then they merged and the werehorse was snorting and stamping impatiently, the children eager to be on their way.
She drew her fingers down the torn arm. The wounds were already closed, ragged pink furrows visible through the• rents in her sleeve. With the knife from her belt sheath she cut away the bloody rags. She tossed the sleeve into the fire, thought a minute, cut the other sleeve to match. She knelt beside the river and washed away the dried blood. By the time she was finished the furrows had filled in, even the pink flush was gone. She looked at the arm a moment, then bent again, scooped up water, splashed it over her face, drank a little. The children melted apart and moved beside her, throwing questions, demands, pleas at her, as she walked about the glade, kicking leaves over the body of the malouch, smoothing out the rips in the sod he made with his claws, repacking the saddlebags with slow meticulous care, dismantling the tripod, dousing the fire, burying the blackened bits of wood. She said nothing to them, refused stubbornly to acknowledge their presence, walked heavily to the riverbank and sang the mourning song for the malouch and for the wood she burned, sang the praises of the living river, the living forest. A week ago she would have done all this-restored the land, sung the praises-because she’d done similar things a hundred times befor
e, because she rested comfortably in the support of ancient custom. This time it was a way to shout at the murdering invaders that nothing was changed, that Arth Slya still lived as long as one of Slya’s children lived and followed Slya’s way.
When she turned away from the river, the werehorse was waiting beside the fallen ashtree. She saddled him, tossed the bulging bags in place, tied on the spade and hatchet, then stepped onto the ash and pulled herself onto his back. He trotted to the track, did a few caracoles to loosen up then started racing down the mountain once again, crystal eyes having no trouble with the thickening shadow. Down and down…
Until she saw a body flung beside the track, a boy huddled round a gaping wound in his chest. She screamed the horse to a halt, flung herself down and ran back. Kneeling beside the boy, she pressed him over. “Marran,” she whispered. She brushed dirt and leaves from his face. His eyes were open, dull, shrunken. She tried to shut them, but her hands fumbled uselessly. Behind her the horse stomped impatiently, then whickered and nudged her with his nose. “Stop it,” she said. “Don’t bother me.”
She gave up trying to straighten Marran, sat on her heels and looked about, her tongue caught between her teeth.
Yaril came round her, squatted beside Man-an’s body. He put his hand on the boy’s face, drew it back. “Dead over a day, Brann. Nothing you can do.”
Brann blinked slowly, brushed a hand across her face. “It’s Marran,” she said. She got to her feet. “Help me fetch wood.” With clumsy hands she untied the hatchet from the fallen saddle and started away. “We’ve got to burn him free.” She cast about for dry downwood. Yaril and Janl ran beside her, trying to talk to her. “We’re getting close to the Temuengs; it’s dark, they’ll see any fire big enough to burn a body; he’s dead, how much can it matter when you put him on a pyre? Free your people and let them take care of him, Brann, Bramlet, Brambleall-thorns, it won’t take that long, if we go on now, you can have them free by dawn, back here before dusk, come on, Brann…”
Brann shook her head, her mouth set in a stubborn line. She wasn’t going to be stymied from doing what she clung to as right; if she let one thing go, the rest might slip away from her little by little. Bewildered and uncertain, alone with nothing but memory to guide her, all she could do was hold by what she did know. That this was Marran. That she owed him his fire. She trembled, her knees threatening to give way, caught hold of the branch waving in her face. Wood. Yes. She pulled the limb taut and lifted the hatchet.
One of the children made an irritated humming sound, then they were both in front of her, holding her by the arms, taking the hatchet from her. She tried to pull away but their hands were locked to her as if their flesh was melded to hers. Their fire came into her; it pinned her in place as if her feet had grown roots. She cried out, tried again to wrench free; they held her; the fire held her. Frightened and frantic, she writhed against that double grip until Yaril’s words finally seeped through her panic.
“Wait, wait, listen to us, Bramlet, listen, we can help you, listen, we’ll help, we understand, listen…”
She grew quiet, breathing heavily. The grip on her arms relaxed; movement restored to her, she licked dry lips. “Listen?”
“Let us make fire for you.”
“Wha…”
“Go back, sit by the boy and wait. We’ll make a hotter, cleaner fire for your friend, Bramble, he’ll burn in mountain heart. Wouldn’t you rather that, than green and smoky wood?”
She looked from one small pale face to the other; the drive went out of her, she turned and fumbled her way back to Marran’s body, stood looking down at him a moment. “Mama…” She backed away to give the fire room and sat in the middle of the trampled track, her arms crossed tight across her narrow chest.
Yaril and Jaril came from the shadows and took up places facing each other across the body, with formal movements like the paces of a dance, dissolved into light shimmers that bobbed up and down like bubbles on a string. Brann heard the swooping sweet song again, Jaril’s deeper notes dominating, looked at Marran half in shadow, half in moonlight, looked away pushing her grief back, shutting it away inside her as she’d done with the rest of her anger and pain, not noticing how frequently she was doing this or realizing how much trouble she was piling up for herself when the rush of events was over and there was nothing more to distract her from all that she had lost or from the cold shock of what her future held for her. The shimmers vibrated faster and faster, waves of color-blue and green and crimson-passing across them top to bottom, faster faster faster, the song rising to a high piercing scream. They darted away from each other, whipped around and came rushing back, slamming together into a blinding explosion. Blue fire roared up in a gather of crackling tongues. Hanging first in midair, the fire lowered until it touched, then ate down into Marran, racing up and down his contorted body, consuming flesh and bone until there was only ash.
The blue flame paled, broke in half, the halves tumbled apart, and the children lay on the leaves, pale and weary.
Yaril sat up. “We have to hunt before we can go on.” Jaril rolled up, nodded, flowed immediately into the hound form and trotted away, Yaril following after, most of the spring gone out of her legs. The burning had cost them.
Brann watched them go, sat where she was for a few breaths longer, then she got to her feet, stretched and began to sing the mourning song for Marran.
ABOUT AN HOUR before dawn, the werehorse slowed to a walk, hooves flowing into clawed pads as each one left the ground. It ghosted on, step by slow step, through the starlit quiet until the sound of a man’s voice raised in idle complaint came drifting up the track. Brann swung down, pulled the saddlebags off and carried them to a tangleroot, stowed them in the trunk hollow, struggling to make no sounds. She came back, eased the buckles loose and slid the saddle off, teeth tight together, moving as smoothly as she could so nothing would rattle or clink. By the time she reached the huge tree, Jaril was there to help her lower the saddle.
They crept around the perimeter of the camp clearing until they found a pepperbush growing crookedly out from the roots of a sweetsap where a thin screen of toothy leaves let them see without being seen.
The captives slept in the center of the cleared ground, the ropes knotted about their necks tied to stakes pounded into the hard soil. Perhaps on the first two nights some had lain awake, too stunned by grief and fear to sleep, but this night they all slept, heavily, noisily, with groans and farts and snores and sobs and the shapeless mutters that sleepers make when they’re speaking into dream.
Two men slouched heavily about the edge of the camp clearing, passing each other at roughly fifteen-minute intervals, occasionally moving among the ropes of captives, prodding those who groaned and snored too loudly. The rest of the soldiers were rolled in their blankets in two rows on the river side, the pimush slightly apart from his men.
Yaril eeled up to Brann’s shoulder, breathed, “Jaril’s started for the far side. I’ll tell you when he’s ready. All you have to do is get close to that sentry, touch him before he can yell. Then we can take the rest.”
Brann started sweating. Abruptly deserted by rage and grief, no longer comfortably numb, she had to face the reality of those men whose life forces she was going to suck away. For all her eleven years her parents had taught her reverence for life. Slya’s strictures demanded awareness of responsibility for all life stopped; she remembered how desperately the malouch had clung to life and how easily she’d stripped that life away and how nauseated she felt about it later. But there was no going back.
Yaril wriggled close, warm and alive in her eerie way. “Look at his face, that sentry coming toward you,” she breathed.
When the guard came out of shadow, she saw the face of the man who’d taken Ruan by her heels and swung her twice against the Oak, thrown her away like a weed onto a compost heap.
“Be ready,” Yaril said, her words a thread of sound by Brann’s ear. “When this one has his back turned Jaril will bite t
he other.”
The sentry walked past her. “Go.” Urged on by the whispered word, Brann raced after the sentry, slapped her hand against the bare flesh of his arm before he had a chance to cry out, landed her other hand, began drawing the life from him, the fire hammering into her differing in quality and force from that she’d taken from the smaller, less deadly beasts. This was a predator among predators, a killer horn as much as bred, only slightly tamed by the discipline of the Temueng army. She read that in the flash as his life-force roared into her. A second later he fell dead. Breathing hard, struggling to quell heinausea, Brann looked for the other sentry. He was down also, silently dead. In their serpent forms the children distilled from their substance a venom that killed between one breath and the next, a minuscule drop in poison sacs yet enough for the death of a dozen men.
“It’s time,” Yaril whispered. “Don’t think, Bramlet, just do. It’s the only way to keep your people safe. These murderers have earned death, more than you know.” She touched Brann’s arm, then ran ahead of her to the lines of sleeping soldiers. A shimmer of pale light and she was a serpent crawling in the dust, in the dim starlight, dust-colored and nearly invisible except when her viper’s head rose above a sleeping man and darted down.
Brann nerved herself and followed. Man to man she went, setting her hands on those the children had not touched, taking their life into her, a burning unending river flooding her. She drank and drank until there were no more lives to take, trying as she stooped and touched to ignore the pleasure currents curling turgidly through her. It didn’t seem right. Her vengeance should be pure, untainted by anything but righteous wrath.