by Geoff Ryman
“Good morning, Lady,” replied Cara, remembering that.
The girl ran a hand that was quivering across her face. “I’ve got no pots to cook,” she said, near tears. “I didn’t shovel ash all morning for you,” she told the children. Smiling in victory the boy stood on tip-toe over the fire-wall to nurse his pot of rice. Women standing around the two fires looked at Cara with sullen interest, hugging little black pots to themselves. The place smelt of rancid goat’s milk and damp wool and smouldering dung-cakes and steam. Cara was already drenched with sweat.
“You’d best sit down, with your wounds,” said the girl. There was only one chair, and it was occupied. “Move off,” said the bondgirl, to another girl her own age. “The Sir is wounded.” The other girl, puffy-eyed, silent, stood up and stumbled away, obeying the laws of hospitality.
“There’s no food to offer you. I’d give you some . . .” the bondgirl’s voice trailed off. “You must be hungry.” Cara lowered herself, carefully, into the chair, and felt a wave of relief. Then she saw that the girl needed it more. She had to lean on the table, and her black hair fell straggly over her face, which was pale, almost translucently white, even in the orange light of the candles. She swayed where she stood.
“My ’Ta will be angry. Without his breakfast.”
Cara tried to lift herself off the chair, to give it to her, but found herself rooted to it, unable to move. “I’d give you the chair, Lady, but . . .”
The girl only nodded. “They could give us something,” she said, hatred harsh in her voice, and jerked her head towards the rest of the main house.
Is this what Latch felt, Cara wondered. The wood of the only table was thick, for the chopping of vegetables and meat. There were no vegetables or meat. Cara saw only the bags of rice the women wore jealously around their necks. Cara’s family did not treat their people like this. They gave the bondmen their own places, small houses at the foot of the cliff, and gave them the same food to eat as the Important House. Surely that made a difference?
“They’ve got you too,” the girl said, dull with exhaustion and hopelessness.
“Me?”
“Hmmm. They’ll put things on your legs to make them worse. Don’t take anything from them, not even water. They’ll say you owe them money then, and that you have to work it off, and they’ll give you enough food to live on, and say you owe them for that too. If you try to run away, they cut the strings inside your legs. Or set the dogs on you. And you were off to see the world. It’s a shame.” Then she added in a sleepy voice full of wonder, “Your bandages are made of lace.”
Cara looked at the face with a woman’s eye. Desperately tired, but pretty; pretty but coarse, harsh, lips too heavy. Nice high cheekbones. Her dress was rough knotted wool, grainy and oatmeal coloured. She had not tried to dye it with berries as the other women had, a patchy purple. The girl was drifting off to sleep on her feet, as Cara watched.
“Were you born here?” Cara asked, suddenly, to wake her up.
“I think we were somewhere else when I was younger. My Ata. My brothers.” The girl’s lips curled in loathing. She glanced down at Cara’s naked body without shame.
“What about your brothers?” Cara asked. The girl shrugged and scuffed her feet and went silent.
Cara understood somehow that she had been beaten at times and that at times, in a house full of men who could not buy wives, all together under one rough blanket, her brothers would have used her for sex. Cara found herself asking, “When I leave here, will you come with me?”
The girl gave a bitter shrug of a laugh. “You? With your feet burned through, and no clothes, and your legs like that?” The face softened a bit. “Duhdo duhdo genzu,” she murmured.
What Cara felt was at first indistinguishable from pity. It was an ache in her heart that suddenly seemed to extend to her loins. The pale flesh seemed suddenly beautiful. Cara wanted to stroke it, to feel how smooth it was. She smiled at her new predicament. This was, she realised, how a man felt. Cara glanced down at her own legs—brown and muscular and covered only with a trace of golden hair and a small loin cloth. She thought the legs were beautiful too.
“Sit down,” Cara said to the girl.
“On you?” the girl asked, her lip curling again.
“There’s nowhere else. You’re falling asleep,” Cara reasoned.
To Cara’s surprise, the bondgirl relented. She settled slowly, like an old woman, onto Cara’s lap, and nestled her head on Cara’s male chest. “Young beautiful sirs,” she murmured. “You all turn into spiders.” Then, in an even fainter voice. “It’s the work.”
The girl was still asleep when her father found her. He was a pig of a man, if pigs are ever thin and wiry and desperate, with a long grizzled beard. “Where’s my food, girl?” he demanded, his anger kept in check by the presence of the strange young sir who, even wounded, looked large and determined enough to throw him bodily out of the house.
“She fell asleep,” Cara warned, dislike in her voice.
“A man’s got to eat, Sir,” said the girl’s father, stepping forward, stepping back, nervous, resentful, broken.
“Does she work all day in the fields and then do morning and evening in the kitchen?” Cara asked, her voice still cold.
“Well, she’s a woman,” shrugged the man, made uncomfortable. Then a light came into his eyes. He became a caricature of cunning. “And a hard worker too, Sir. I think you’ll find it’s not sleep that’s making her sit on your lap. No, she’s a rugged hard worker, and does as she’s told.” Even he had to add, out of truthfulness, “Usually.”
“I want her,” said Cara.
“Oh, well, what are we talking about,” said her father. “I hope you mean only a decent marriage, Sir. That there is my only daughter, and a valuable worker for me and my sons. My one real treasure, Sir, and my pleasure and my comfort.” He added, darkly, “There’ll have to be a dowry.”
“I’m as poor as you are,” said Cara.
“Well, no marriage,” said the man. “And me and my sons can make sure that there will be nothing else, either.” He was bargaining, merely. He waited for Cara to make an offer. He leant down and whispered. “As a matter between us, I can tell you, Sir. She goes on the blankets.” The straggly-bearded, sallow little man pulled back, a meaningful glint in his eyes.
That, if nothing else, would have made up Cara’s mind. “You don’t understand,” Cara answered. “I’m taking her. If she’ll come.”
“Tuh,” said the man with a shudder of fear and laughter. He looked for support at the women ringed around the fires. They were fascinated, now. “You? Take her? With nothing but a shirt and a loincloth to you? My daughter’s worth more than that.” He stepped forward and pulled her arm.
“Get up, you bitch’s hole, sitting on the pegs of strange men when I’m asleep! Get up and get me food.”
Cara’s arm encircled the girl, and held her, and would not let her go.
“Who are you, pushing and pulling?” she suddenly yelled at them both.
“Your father wants his breakfast. You are going to stay in this chair and rest.” Cara had to fight to hold her. “I’m going to cook it.”
The girl stopped pushing against him. “You are?”
“Yes. If you’ll get off me.”
Mouth hanging open with surprise, the girl stood up. She looked helplessly at her father. “Well, if he wants to, Ata.” She sat down, and with the strangeness of what had happened, blurted out a laugh. The other women in the kitchen crowded round to see the beautiful stranger with his funny walk fill an old square pot with water from the cistern. The girl’s father seemed to swell, and put both his hands on his hips in a kind of relieved swagger. “Well, I must have left myself behind in bed this morning.”
The fires were piled behind two waist-high, horseshoe-shaped walls. Amid the embers, pots rested precariously on stone columns. None of them were empty. Deftly, Cara jammed a large branch within the horseshoe and hung her pot from it.
“I don’t think women should work harder than men?” Cara said, as a question, looking into the eyes of the old woman. The truth of it struck the woman’s face, and the laughter fell from it. True enough, the face gestured silently to a friend.
“Your rice, girl,” Cara asked, holding out her hand. “Come on, I’m not going to steal it.”
Her face quickening with some new emotion, the girl reached down into the front of her dress, and lifted out the tiny knitted sack. Without looking to her father, she passed it to Cara, and she was smiling, with hope, though her eyes were wide and sad. Her father, at a loss, tried to look amused and victorious.
The rice was boiling when the farmer came in.
“Keri, you’re not in the fields,” he said, simply.
“It’s this man, Sir,” said Keri, the father. “He’s distracting my daughter, Sir, so that she wouldn’t cook, and now I’m late and I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”
“Then you shall have to work without your breakfast, won’t you?” said the bondbearer.
“Yes, yes Sir,” said Keri, dipping as he spoke.
“I shall bring it to you in the fields, if I can,” said Cara, over her shoulder. “Or perhaps your daughter will.” Her legs were starting to throb again.
“You’re working,” said the bondbearer to her. “Good. Legs don’t look so bad. Perhaps you’ll be in the fields tomorrow.” The bondbearer was a heavy man, with bow-legs, wearing what his workers wore, except that he had all of it together: the heavy white robe that could be bound up around the waist for wading through paddies, trousers to the knee, shoulder straps for his sandals, a wine bag, and a broad round hat made of reed that hung down behind his back. In one hand, coiled, was a whip.
“I’m not going to be your bondman,” Cara told him.
“Aren’t you? Then how are you to pay for the food you’ve eaten?”
“I have eaten none of your food, and as for a stone floor and a dirty blanket, all I owe you for that is gratitude.”
“I don’t do trade in gratitude.”
“Then you won’t get any. Not from me. You must do a trade in other emotions.”
“Certainly not in insolence,” said the bondbearer. “Not in my own house. Get out and walk with your wounds, if you’re able. No boots. No clothes. Tuh.” He jumped up onto the table, sat on its edge. “I can give you boots and clothes. And food, oh yes, even you cannot do without food, young Sir. I’ll give you these things, and shelter from the sun. And you work for me only long enough to pay for them. You look strong enough, apart from your legs. You should be able to work it back in no time. You’ll need to rest, you know, rest to heal. No one’s going to give you that for free. Except your own family. From the sound of your talk, they no doubt once would have. But I don’t want to delve. Take your choice. Food and shelter in exchange for an honest man’s work. Or out, now, I’ll not keep you.” He looked at the girl. “That rice is done,” he said. “Take it to your father.”
“But . . .” she began to protest. It plainly wasn’t.
“It’s done because I say it is,” the bondbearer said.
The girl stood, still weary, hand on her knees to push herself to her feet. Then she strode to the fire and grabbed Cara’s arm.
“I’ll go with you,” she whispered fiercely, her eyes hard and hungry, encircled with dark baggy flesh.
Cara was going to tell her no. The bondbearer was right. She couldn’t walk, she had no shoes, she had no feet. She could hardly stand any longer in front of the fire. She was weak with standing, and hungry, ill with hunger. The bondbearer would come after them, and Cara could not run. Cara was going to shake her head, say no, I cannot take you, I cannot take myself.
“Move, girl!” the bondbearer said, suddenly loud, sensing victory.
There was only one small window in the kitchen. Suddenly, as if it were a pursed mouth between bulging cheeks, wind blasted through it. A cloud of dust slammed through the kitchen door like a fist. The farmer turned and hid his eyes; the girl cried out. Cara felt a nestling, almost tender like the snout of a pet, in her right hand. Shielding her eyes, she looked down. Point resting on the floor, was her sword. It bumped against her hand again, insistently, and Cara took it up. With a humming noise, like the Spell of Sitting on Air, her shield floated in the air through the door towards her.
“Come on, girl!” Cara bellowed and grabbed the bondgirl’s hand and pulled, squinting against the dust and wind.
“A sword!” the girl shrieked. “But how? But how?” She did not see Cara pluck her shield out of mid-air. Together they hobbled across the kitchen, the girl inserting herself under Cara’s shoulder for help.
“The Law! The Law!” the bondbearer shouted, rising to his feet.
Outside, chickens that had been let loose for a morning peck were being blown across the stone, balls of clucking feathers, and there were crashes from inside the main house as things were blown over.
Walking out of the desert, came Cara’s armour, breastplate and helmet uninhabited by a body, but in their proper places, the boots walking by themselves. “What manner . . .” Cara began, and then understood. The armour broke into a run to meet its mistress. It met her, and spread, enveloped her, and suddenly boots protected her feet, and a helmet covered her head.
“Magic!” the girl laughed, thrilled by her luck. “Magic!”
The bondbearer stared in his doorway, stunned, watching the two of them stumble away across the yard to the gate. Staggering under Cara’s weight, fighting the wind, the girl pulled it open. The two of them slipped away. A spear followed, all by itself. It hopped on one end. The farmer watched in disbelief, until the gate fell shut and the wind died. Then he roused himself.
“Kawa! Harig ban Har!” he roared, running with heavy ungainly strides towards the stables.
The road from the farm was absolutely straight, all the way to the river, with irrigations and paddies on either side of it in tidy patterns, flat and steamy with only wispy borders of reed in which to hide.
“Who is he calling?” Cara asked.
“The men who train the dogs,” said the girl in a voice that suddenly sounded small, and she felt Cara go still and icy beside her. “What other magic do you know?” the girl asked.
“I can fight,” Cara said, without much hope. “Get me there.” She pointed with her sword to a narrow track that ran along a bank between the paddies. It would be better to face the dogs there than on the wider road where they could be more easily surrounded. They tried to run, with an awkward pumping motion, limping, hopping, along the road to where the track turned off it. Bondmen working in a line across the rice field stood up to watch them, their faces in shadow from their broad hats, wriggles of reflected sunlight playing on their faces.
From within the compound of the house there came an agonised baying, as if the beasts were in an extremity of anguish. Then a kind of squealing snarl in chorus.
“They’re off the leads,” panted the girl, bearing a good part of Cara’s weight. “If they grab you, they’ll never let go, until the master tells them. Go for their eyes then, poke them out with your thumbs. If one of them gets me, kick him in the balls. If it’s a bitch, stick it up the rear.”
“Front legs?” Cara asked.
“If you can get both at once and pull them apart hard, they die, yes. If you can do it without having your throat torn out. Their hearts stop.”
“You’ve seen this before.”
The girl simply nodded. They stopped on the track, and turned, and stood back to back, and Cara passed the girl the shield and the spear. “They’ll hit me first. Try to fend them off, like with a stick. The shield’s got a sharp edge, use it like a club.”
The gates of the farm swung open, and the dogs poured out, tall, grey, shaggy beasts, with barrel
chests and long thin black legs that moved in great loping strides, black eyes, flapping ears and tongues and black lips drawn back from fangs. Men in thick leather aprons and gloves followed the dogs, and the bondmaster, holding his hat on his head as he ran. The workers in the field called warnings to their friends, and stood up straight, hands by their sides.
“Will they go for them as well?”
The girl shrugged. “Not usually. Unless they run.”
Only on the other side of the road, catspaws of wind disturbed water on empty peaceful fields. “I’m sorry,” Cara said.
“Better to die free, eh?” the girl said, but it was a question.
They heard whistles and shouts. Two of the dogs had become confused, and peeled away from the pack, plunging down the bank into the water of the rice fields. The nerve of some of the bonded people broke, and they ran, mud clinging to their feet, sucking them down. The dogs leapt from one row of rice to the next, where there were roots and plants to give them support. Cara counted the remaining dogs: eight left. They turned in a pack, like a dark stream, from the road onto their narrow path. Cara saw, glancing at the rice field, a dog launch itself onto a bondman’s back, jabbing its teeth into the back of his neck. The man’s head was held underwater.
“The dogs killed my mother,” Cara said. She wanted someone to know that.
“And mine,” whispered the girl.
Then the dogs were on them, close and fast.
“Not this time,” Cara promised herself. “Not this time. Not again.” A dog leapt toward her.
Cara’s sword seemed to launch itself in an arc, slicing across the dog’s neck. A dying weight struck Cara in the chest, and she felt an almost gentle brush of cool, moist teeth against her neck, as she wiped the weight away from her with her free arm. She drove the sword down, into the back of another dog’s neck. The sword struck between two vertebrae. Cara felt the whole muscular body shudder and twist, and begin its death jitter, flanks twitching. The sword would not come free. Teeth sunk into Cara’s shielding left arm. Twin, needled vices closed around both of her ankles. The dogs had her.