by Lori Martin
The constant press of people wore on her. On a free afternoon she followed the rutted trail to the place where they said the Defiers had launched their ambush. Her Band had been warned not to travel beyond the army settlements alone. This she disobeyed, but she took her short knife and bow.
The site wasn’t much to see, just a small cleared patch of earth, with a few remains of the old campfire. Traces could be seen of the scuffling and skidding of the battle: a trivial fight, not more than a dozen people involved on either side – yet someone’s children had lost their lives to it. A more recent track had been worn around the perimeters by the Fourth’s archers, who had been bringing new arrivals to see the sight for moons.
She left the track and knelt by the blackened stones of the campfire, which had been left undisturbed. She considered the rise of the earth before her, the passing trail, and the thick trees behind. The Lindahnes had chosen a good place, both for launching the ambush and for retreating. They had attacked a Mendale caravan. No one remembered who among the travelers had been the target, or why; the Fourth’s archers claimed the murdering lins killed for the poisonous sport of it.
She lifted one of the firestones and tossed it to feel its weight. Her movement dislodged something else, which dropped into a scatter of leaves. She felt for it.
It was a brooch of some kind, broken, with part of the backing snapped away. As she rubbed it with the edge of her robe she suddenly heard a movement in the brush behind her.
She was exposed here in the clearing. If it was a rebel archer she could be dead at any moment, an easy shot. With icy control she stood up, keeping her knife hidden, apparently still absorbed in examining her find. Another rustling sound, followed by crackling, reached her.
She shouted, “Pirri! Come and look at this!” Let whoever it was think she had company, perhaps a full patrol. The sounds paused and the clearing hung with waiting. A startling rushing noise told her her mistake: he had decided to stop her mouth before her companions reached her.
She whirled, bracing her feet for the impact, which did not come. In his panic the charging Lindahne tripped on the firestones. Scayna had a momentary vision of pale eyes widened with fear, of a toppling gawky figure, arms flailing, before he crashed to the black earth of the old camp fire. He rolled to scramble up. She planted her boot on his calf, letting him feel the hard leather on his bare skin. He looked around wildly, grasping for his knife, which had fallen beyond his reach. She leaned over him and laid the sharp point of her own weapon into the soft fold of his exposed neck.
She knew immediately that she couldn’t kill him. If he had attacked her, yes, but not like this – not with the will gone out of him. He stared at her like a ranfox in the net, exhausted, glassy eyes knowing there would be no mercy. She said, “Tell me who you are, Lindahne, and tell me quick.”
Beads of sweat fear came out on his forehead, but he jutted his chin out and tried to muster a steady voice. He croaked, ”No.”
The robe was stained, the cloak torn; his hair was greasy and stuck to his skull. The sparse stubble of his young years covered his upper lip and jaw. “Defier,” Scayna said. “You escaped the attack on the headquarters camp and you’re trying to get back over the border. Is that it?”
“No, no,” he gasped. He fumbled at his belt. She pushed the knifepoint a little harder, as a warning, but he was only trying to show her proof. He held out a guild-token eagerly.
Scayna squinted. “Shoe crafter? Sorry, I can’t believe you. Even if it were true, you’ve no business sneaking around the checkpoints. Not to mention trying to murder me.”
“No, I – I thought you were – I thought –” It was pathetic, watching him try to find a good lie. “I thought you were a Defier.”
This inspiration made her want to laugh, but she checked it. She couldn’t kill him – though if she brought him in, as she surely should, the ranking would probably hang him. Well, that wasn’t her concern, was it?
And what if she did march him back? He was frightened now, but once on his feet he’d be sure to notice how much smaller she was than he. He’d been panicked into attacking her once already; a second try would be a surety. “Please,” he choked.
“Anyone else with you? Is there?” The knife’s pressure made a red ridge on his skin. A small trickle of blood was released.
“No,” he whispered.
She lifted her boot and stepped back. “Go.” He stared. “You heard me, go! No, no, you fool – that way.” He bolted to the outskirt of the clearing, turned back in confusion for his lost knife, caught her eyes again, and finally fled.
She dug a small hole in the ground with her boot heel and kicked the Defier’s knife into it. After a time she remembered the brooch she had found, still clutched in her left hand and wet now with sweat. Fine silver. A nobleborn’s no doubt. She lifted it up to the sunlight, blowing away the last of old ash and dust. It was cross-etched into a sun – no, a woman’s face, with a curving cloud of hair which formed the brooch’s rim. Someone’s love, someone’s ancestor... or the face of the Lindahne goddess?
Whatever it was, the work was beautiful. She tilted it sideways and up again, watching the dancing reflections.A Lindahne had created this, in some unknown year, to carry light, itself the carrier of color. (A child galloping into the sun.) And all that effort had gone in service of a mere brooch. No Mendale would have taken the trouble. If it held the cloak closed, it would suit its purpose, and that would be all.
Scayna raised her head, listening. She decided there was no one there.
Chapter 19
The Farfells was the northernmost section of the foothills. They took the first ascent without trouble, but once within the surrounding slopes they were forced to a halt. From their vantage point they could look down on a spreading
plateau and the next rise beyond. At least two, perhaps three full Bands were camped here. The soldiers swarmed everywhere, from tents to streams to cooking fires to tents. The sentries along the outskirts were keeping a good vigil, eyes alert. A chilhi was conducting maneuvers.
The three of them hunkered down behind a wide fallen oak, crowded nearly on top of each other for the view. Crushed between the two men’s heavy bodies, Mejalna whispered, “We’ve certainly picked a bad spot to cross the border. We’ll have to back up and go around.” She craned her head, trying to see Paither over her shoulder. His breath was in her ear, but he said nothing. On her right, pressing on her forearm, Samalas muttered, “I doubt we can.” He lifted himself for another look over the log, and settled back down with gloom.
“But we –”
“Shhh,” Paither said. “Let’s back off first.” They shifted. Paither, trying to be noiseless, leaned his weight for a moment on Mejalna’s hips, then slid backwards along the ground. They followed. When they had gone another ten yards they rolled to their feet and returned to their horses, tied up in a far thicket.
“I can’t believe we walked right into so many soldiers,” Mejalna began, but Samalas, forgetting himself, broke in.
“If the Mendales have this many soldiers all the way out here, then the entire stretch of foothills must be covered with them. Obviously they’re coming down hard. We can’t possibly sneak past. What we’ll have to do –” In the middle of a breath his eyes met Paither’s, which had gone a cold white-grey. Mejalna looked at the ground. After a loaded moment Samalas said, “My suggestion, relas, is that we go through a checkpoint as if we were ordinary citizens.”
Mejalna drew breath but Paither signaled her to silence. “Go ahead,” he said to Samalas.
“We’ll have to represent ourselves as traders. But first we’d better go south. No real trader would be this far off the main routes.”
“Name of Nialia,” Mejalna said. “Do you suppose they’re going to let the relas just walk through a checkpoint? What do you want to do, blacken his skin, grey his hair, tie a hood over his face? They’re looking for him.”
Samalas flushed with anger. His struggle to bow to Paith
er’s authority took up all his inward patience It enraged him to see Mejalna accept the new order with, he thought, such ease. They argued constantly now.
“Your suggestion?” Paither interposed, as if they were at a council.
“I –” She drew herself together. “I doubt we can get you through the checkpoints, relas, disguised as a Lindahne trader. But we might have a chance if we were Mendales. Mendale soldiers, Samalas. I think we should knock a few sentries over the head, take their uniforms, and pose as soldiers. No, wait,” she interrupted herself, frowning. “I suppose they all know each other out here.”
“Not necessarily.” In spite of himself, Samalas fastened on the problem; his emotion was subsiding. “We might be able to do it, relas. When they change the night shift... we’d have to work it out carefully –”
Paither grinned suddenly. “Like your abduction plan?” he joked, and instantly regretted it. Once again he’d offended him. “Wait,” he said gently. “Neither of your suggestions would work for the simple reason, as you say, Mej, that Tribune Haol’s managed to put all of Mendale on the hunt for me. It comes to this: I must get to Lindahne, and yet I can’t.”
“Excuse me, relas, but that’s hardly of much help.”
“I mean to say, I can’t get to Lindahne by land.”
“By land?” Mejalna repeated blankly. “What are you saying?”
He looked out beyond them, as if he spoke to someone far off and yet quite near. “My mother,” he said, and paused.From his tone they knew he did not mean Mistress Pillyn. “My mother once planned – carefully planned, Samalas – to cross the Valtah. She didn’t live to do it, but her calculations were kept for me. Pillyn,” he paused again over the name, then continued, “Pillyn kept them for me. I almost left them behind in the retreat, but I suppose the goddess had her eye on me. The scrolls are in my saddlebag right now.”
“But relas, the Valtah –”
“It can’t be crossed, no one’s ever –”
“I know,” he said. “But remember, I’m not trying to cross into the Feimenna country, if it exists. I’m trying to get to Lindahne.” They both looked bewildered. He remembered that Pillyn called Feimenna the place of dreams. “According to the Mendales,” he explained, “Feimenna is the name of the land beyond the Valtah.” For a moment he was foreign to them.
“Oh,” Mejalna said. “I never heard that. I just thought you were going mad.”
“Relas, what is your point?”
“My point is that the Valtah roars past the foothills to Lindahne. A boat would take me right down along the shoreline from here to the Lindahne woodlands, and I could go on land from there to the Five Hills.”
“You had this all planned out,” Mejalna accused.
“If we follow the calculations in my mother’s writings we should be able to build a small boat.”
“Which we’ll have no idea how to use,” Samalas said. “None of us has that kind of training. And you intend for us to take our first lesson on the Valtah itself? Listen to me, please, relas. No one, not even the fishing folk by the Sea, has ever conquered the Valtah. We’ll be killed.”
“Not you.You’re going through the checkpoint.”
A fear that had nothing to do with their dangerous plans hit Mejalna. He was looking at Samalas; she couldn’t tell if she was included in the statement. Paither continued, “Without me you have a chance of getting through. No one’s got a description of you. Once in Lindahne you can begin organizing our people. The Valtah runs fast, but I’ll be willing to bet you’ll be at home first.”
“Relas, you can’t risk your life on twenty-year-old scrolls.”
“Nineteen. No, I mean that seriously, you can count it by my lifetime, because Dalleena my mother traded her life for mine... and for my sister’s. She was a true-chosen Nialian. I have faith in those scrolls.”
Mejalna forced herself to say, “It’s still a risk. Perhaps you should stay here in Mendale, relas, and we’ll return in your name.”
“As if they won’t find me here eventually? Where can I hide? Tell me, you’re both leaders, born Lindahnes. You know the Defiers, you know the Five Hills. Answer me truthfully before our gods: would you have a hope of proclaiming a new relas in Lindahne, when the man you name is cowering in Mendale? Would you be able to rouse our people, rally them to war, with nothing but a name to follow?”
They hesitated. Samalas demanded, “And if I say yes?”
“Can you?”
“No. You know the answer. No.”
“Mejalna?”
“My answer is also no, relas. But please... your answer to me must be yes.”
“Answer to what?”
“If you’re determined to do this, I want to come with you.”
He breathed in quickly. In the tone of a man who wishes to be argued with he said, “There’s no need for you to take the risk.”
“But I can help. It isn’t true, what Samalas said. I do have some boating knowledge. I have cousins on the Fifth Hill by the Sea, and I used to spend summers with them. We used to go out on the water together.”
“Well, that’s something,” Samalas said. His mind was back on practical problems; he didn’t see their speaking faces. “In that case I agree. She should go with you.”
“If you go. I wish you’d reconsider, relas.”
They argued a while longer, but the relas was adamant. Neither of them could sway him, and as they had no alternate proposal they were weaponless. They thought it was quite mad, and doomed to failure, but they would do their best for him. That was their duty.
They withdrew to deeper forest, full of its own silence and sound, and took turns keeping watch day and night. In addition to their long knives, Samalas had a sharp Lindahne hard dagger, which could cut on one end, bore holes on the other, and scrape on both sides. Paither vanished one night and returned in the morning, bruised but armed with a stolen ax. They set about tree-felling.
His long-preserved scrolls were of practical use. Dalleena had taken the boat-building works of the Lindahne Seacoast as a model; there were detailed plans for construction without nails or binding-cloth. A few were even accompanied by quick sketches of an ingenious system of notches and grooves. With a start he recognized Pillyn’s fluid pencil lines. In her youth she had been an enthusiastic artist. He tried to imagine the work of that short and desperate exile – had it been as tedious as this? He ran his fingers along the dried parchment, as if he could trace the feel of the writing; Dalleena-relas’s clear hand rose and fell in steady letters. For the first time he felt a personal grief. He had a sense of loss of her, as poignant and biting as his farewell to his other parents.
Samalas stood guard over the horses while he and Mejalna followed the roar and water-smell in the air. There were no trails; no human came here, but a deer track ran downwards in the right direction. Mejalna paused with her hand on her bow, looking around hopefully: venison would be a feast to them. Paither pushed on, around another thicket of growth, and came suddenly to the shoreline.
Across the river was a wall of thick fog. He had a momentary doubt of anything beyond it. The Lindahnes had no tales to tell of Feimenna; he had heard only vague Mendale remembrances of an age and age ago when, they said, the Valtah had been crossed, and the far country reached. Nothing else was known; who knew if it were true? The name itself meant “outside understanding.”
Well, there were problems enough to deal with on this side.
The rushing river flew past endlessly in clear whites and foamy blues; farther out giant stepping stones of grey rock, worn slick and shining, took the hard pounding of the water and sent swirling towers of sun-lit spray into the air. The river level was well below the bank this year. It had been a decade since the Valtah’s last overflow. On the west shore, this had traditionally meant ruin of vital crops: it had been the hidden cause of the War. He was gazing at the very beginning of all their strife.
He walked to the edge of the bank and leaned over. He was glad to see the botto
m; they would need shallows to launch themselves. Gold darts of fish were carried past his searching eyes, too quickly to see their number, flashing as banners in the wind.
He settled himself on the bank. Yes, it was a fierce frontier, but was it truly unassailable? Had no one ever been driven to try?
Mejalna and Samalas took it for granted: the Valtah could not be conquered. He knew enough now to recognize this as a pure Lindahne outlook. As a people the Lindahnes had always clung to their valley and the Hills, and within these borders they were protected by the divinities. What, after all, was the point in traveling beyond, out into the godless void? They lived in tradition; they did only what had been done before. That was why the new order was such a desperate ordeal to them. In a generation they had still not been reconciled to it, and never would, which was something the Mendales did not understand. Even the woodlands on Lindahne earth had never been fully explored; they had left the wilds free of human interference for centuries. By contrast, the Oversettle Governor had recently petitioned the Assembly for permission to start felling the woodland timber. That was Mendale aggression, reaching for more; in another lifetime or two they would probably level the whole area. We’ll see about that, he thought grimly. It’s true my people have sometimes been too timid, but then they haven’t sown destruction, either.
So the Lindahnes had never tried to cross the Valtah. He had to admit that hidden shore was hardly inviting. But some Mendale, some Mendale had made it and even returned, though no one could say who or why. It had been too long ago. And why had there been no other attempts?
He had been well-schooled, and unlike his companions he knew Mendale history. It was said the infamous Shadow Tribune had once issued an edict against boats or bridges on the river. (Bridges! Surely it would be impossible to sink piles in this swirling water in any case.) If this dim historical recollection was true, why had he done it? What had he feared? He had not left a reputation as a fearful man.
The Shadow was the same Tribune who had invented and perfected the art of torture (a skill, such as it was, unthought of in Lindahne) and raised the holding-house where Paither’s family was now imprisoned. The worst of the Shadow’s excesses had been blotted out of the records and many of his deeds went unremembered. A small legacy or two remained. The watch tower he had built on the extreme northern rise of the Farfells, to look out over the water, was still standing.