(Josserek winced at the thought that to her he might be no more than a fling. He dared not ask. Instead, he remarked that in his homeland, two or more women under a single roof guaranteed trouble. Donya had been puzzled. What was there to spat about? In her life, everybody had personal quarters, goods, work, play, enthusiasm, and didn’t interfere with anybody else’s. Jobs requiring cooperation were organized to finish as quickly and easily as possible. That was plain common sense.
(“Then you Rogaviki have a breed of common sense hardier than any I’ve found before,” he joked—and abruptly remembered her amok rage, and much else.)
“But many are not content to abide at home,” Krona went on. “They form, or they join, partnerships to trap or trade. They settle at Stations, where they feel the pulse of all the Northlands. They roam abroad, try their hands at different things, come back rich in tales. They adventure as artists, artisans, entertainers, inventors, prospectors, scholars, teachers of booklore, seekers of new knowledge in nature. Some seek knowledge beyond nature, and some of those become Forthguides.”
He regarded her with interest and pleasure alike. She was a handsome sight, riding beside him, clad similarly but her shirt half open and hadess flaxen hair tossing free. Her manner was easy, in several ways more cordial than Donya’s alternations of brusqueness, carnivore mirth, and wordless passion. Nonetheless, more marked her off than staff secured to saddlegirth, robes rolled in sleeping bag: more, even, than a remembered remark of hers, that lifelong celibacy was her free choice. “I search into the unhuman,” she had said. “For this, I must myself, at last, become inhuman—a stone, a star, a river, the Ice.”
This day was cloudless, brilliant, but chill, for a north wind blew. Again the country wrinkled treeless, waterholes and rivulets far apart. Grass grew in dry, brownish clumps. Thicker stood heath shrubs, gray-green, which snickered and snapped their twigs around the horses’ knees. Occasional elders reared sallow among them. Rabbits sprang aside, grouse and crow fluttered aloft, but there was no big game. “A poor stretch, sandy soil that doesn’t hold water well, scant rain in summer. Don’t linger; push across to better lands,” the Ferannian kithfolk had advised.
How well did its starkness suit Krona?
“I gather your kind keep moving,” Josserek said. “You’re welcome guests because you counsel the troubled and help train the young—”
“We live for our own enlightenment,” she answered. “But this requires, first, oneness of body and mind. Which is not like oneness of horse and rider. Body and mind are not two separate beings. It is oneness like bird and flight. This comes hard, through efforts and austerities. And they can themselves create a barrier. The bird must glide and hover as well as rise and swoop. Possessions, ties to people or home grounds, would add too great a burden.
“The aim is a self-command more powerful than humans can achieve in ordinary life. Having that, how could I refuse to share, through instruction, a little of it with those who ask, when they have given me hospitality? But helpfulness was never my reason for acquiring the control. Nor is this mastery aught save a first step toward the true end: enlightenment.”
“I’ve met ascetics who’re after the same goal,” Josserek nodded. “Some believe they’ll find it when they’re received into the presence of—of—God, we say, meaning the source of all, supposed to be a person. Others hope to merge their identities with the all itself. I suppose their faith is the closer to yours.”
Immediately he wondered if the word he used meant anything like “faith.” Had he actually said, oh, “opinion,” or maybe “surmise?” Donya had admitted to him that families practiced private rites; but she only knew about hers, which she would not discuss. Clearly the Rogaviki had no set creed, not so much as a mythology. The religions of foreigners amused her.
Krona gave him a steady blue regard. “No,” she declared. “Unless I gravely misunderstand you. I’ve heard rumors about those ideas you mention. They don’t make sense to me. Surely reality is—”
She lost him, went beyond his vocabulary and comprehension, saw it, and came back to guide him. He didn’t get far. Her concepts were too exotic. He got an impression that, in her view, existence moved toward infinite differentiation. Enlightenment was not the union of the self with a changeless ultimate, but the growth of the self ... perhaps, metaphorically, its assimilation of everything else into its awareness. At the same time, the ! self was not a monad. It was dynamically integral with an ever-evolving universe; and in no way was it immortal. Krona made no distinction between knowledge, discovery, intuition, logic, and emotion. They were equally valid, equally essential to insight and completion. At length he sighed and confessed, “After several years of labor, I might begin to see what you’re driving at, not as words but as a reasonable way of describing the cosmos, of living in it. Or I might not. More and more I wonder if I, if any stranger will ever know you folk.”
“Well,” she smiled, “you’re amply puzzling to us. Let’s dip pleasure out of that.”
They had ridden a short while onward, in amicable silence, when Donya returned. She did it at a gallop, over the hilltop and straight at them. Close by, her pony reared to a halt. The smell of its sweat freighted the wind. Donya’s eyes were a slanty green blaze in stiff- held paleness.
Trouble, Josserek knew. His flesh prickled. Krona waited impassive.
“Outrunners,” Donya snapped. “Got to be. A dozen or worse. They must have seen me before I did them, because when I did, they were bound full tilt my way.” Krona turned her head from side to side, scanning emptiness. “Nowhere can we make a stand,” she said. “If we try, we’re theirs.”
“I’d knife myself first, wouldn’t you? Best we hold northward. We’re near Zelevay territory. Likelier we might find help there, or broken ground where we may shake pursuit, than doubling back though Ferannian.” Donya ripped a laugh. “If we can keep in front of the hellhags, that is. Their nags are as scrawny as you’d await, but they’ve three or four remounts apiece. Come!” She set off at a smart trot. Animals lasted longest if the pace varied; and she had many miles in mind. Josserek brought his steed next to hers. Through wind, bush-crackle, hoofbeats, squeak and jingle of harness, he asked, “What in the name of everything bad are Outrunners?’ “Those who never get along with their fellows, and turn to preying on them,” she replied grimly. “Skullers in wastelands, waylayers, hit-and-run raiders. Nigh all are women, and ill it is to fall into their claws.” She bit her lip. “Once I was among those who found the rags of a girl they’d caught. Before she died, she told us a little of what was done to her. It gave me evil dreams for a year afterward. We gathered a band to make an end of them, but they’d scattered and we snagged just three. Left them nailed to trees. Maybe that helped keep the rest from visiting Hervar again.”
He recalled what he had heard in camp. Things which followed had nudged it from his mind. “If you knew Outrunners were in these parts—” he began.
She cut his words across: “The odds were long they wouldn’t come on us. This is sheer foul luck. Now ride!” While she did, she strung her short, recurved hombow.
The bandits appeared. They hastened in disorder. Their yells could not reach him through a mile and a half of shrilling air. Twelve, aye, he counted. And plenty spare horses. Ours can’t outrun theirs after exhaustion sets in.
Three of us. Can we do nothing except flee? This damned naked plain! If we could find a defensible spot, we might pick them off with arrows, or sally forth and kill one or two at a time. But surrounded in the open—
Sidir’s Barommians wouldn’t get netted. Well-armed, armored, trained to fight in units, they ’d grind attackers up for dogfood. Then they’d go on and scour the land clean of renegades. Shark! The Rogaviki can’t assemble a proper posse, let alone a police force! Resentment that he might die because of this brought acid up to bum his gullet. Their society is another of history’s mistakes. Natural selection is about to act on it.
“Yow, hoo—oo, rrra-a-ow!”
sounded before him.
Around a knoll ahead to the left came two. They had no beasts along save the ragged-shaggy mustangs they rode. These they quirted into a spurt of speed on an intercept course.
Donya nocked an arrow, drew bow, loosed. The string twanged. The missile sped true. But the target was out of its path. She had ducked to the opposite side of her mare, hanging on by a leg. As she bobbed up again, she yammered laughter.
Her comrade pounded nearer still. She too was an archer; the first bore a lance. Her hair streamed in elf-locks, so dirty that Josserek couldn’t tell if it was blond or brown. Soot, dried blood, grease likewise marked her skin. Breasts flapped above ribs that he could count. She wore leather breeches and several knives. The other one added a plundered cloak.
“Ee-ya-ah!” she howled, and let fly ... at the horses of her quarry.
A shaft struck home. A remount screamed and plunged. This pair of devils will slow us down for the rest, Josserek knew. He hauled on reins, kicked heels into belly, brought his bronco around and charged.
“You fool—” he heard Donya cry.
Louder sounded the gibing of the Outrunner. Her eyes glistened white above the hollow cheeks, her mouth gaped and drooled. “Aye, come, come, man. Be brave. We’ll not kill you fast. We’ll stake you down and play—make a steer of you, hai, hai?—Yoo-ee!”
She skirted aside. He couldn’t force his animal close in.
As he circled, he glimpsed Donya bound toward them. Behind her, Krona struggled to bring the panicky string under control. The main body of reavers narrowed the distance between.
“Josserek!” Donya called. “Get back there. Help Krona. You’re no use here.”
She passed in a drumfire of hoofs, leered as she did, and taunted, “Will you play with me, you sow?”
The archer screeched, wheeled, gave chase. Likewise did the lancer. They’d torture me for the sport, Josserek knew from what he had heard. The women they’d keep longer. Almost, he disobeyed Donya. I should—No. She knows whatever she wants to do. Maybe simply to die fast.
He returned. The wounded horse still fought to pull free, harder than Krona could match. Josserek lent his strength to the bridle. After a minute, she could soothe them all. The injury wasn’t crippling, though it would be if not attended to soon. They continued their trot. The chase had now halved the gap. Josserek’s awareness stayed by Donya.
Over the heath she fled. The twain barked and gibbered behind. A high elderbush loomed ahead. Donya whipped her mount around in back of it. For this she had spent those hours of training. The crazies had not. They couldn’t stop like that, they plunged on past, right and left, sawing at hackamore lines. Donya’s horse sprang after. She guided by her knees. A knife flared in each hand: into the archer’s back and upward, into the lancer’s side between ribcage and hipbone and across in a slash.
They fell. The archer lay still atop a tussock. The lancer flopped among scratchy shrubs, ululated, spouted impossibly scarlet blood.
In leaps, Donya rejoined her companions. “Here,” she said, tossing reins at Josserek. “Lead mine. I’ll ride the hurt creature as far as it can go, then we’ll cut it loose.” She sprang to the bare back. “Gallop!” she shouted.
Long, smooth velocity took hold of the man. Wind hooted in his ears, whipped tears from his eyes. A glance showed how the Outrunners fell behind. They ignored their casualties. But after a while they exchanged yelps, and presently they halted. He saw them dismount, transfer their primitive harness to fresh beasts, take stirrups anew.
Donya’s horse bled from the arrow behind her knee. It stumbled. He heard its agonized breath. “They will catch us by tomorrow’s nightfall,” Krona deemed coolly.
“Josserek we’ll hold together, right?” Donya said. “We’ll take some of them along to the ants. But swear, if you see me made helpless, you’ll kill me. I give you the same promise. Abide no chance of capture. At your first doubt, escape into death.”
Krona kept still. He wondered fleetingly if she would do the same, or endure degradation and torment as a final exercise of spirit. But why must we choose?
It flared: We don’t have to.
“Donya!” he shouted in radiance. “Krona! We can win!”
The wife stared, the Forthguide grew expressionless, the hoofs fled onward. “How?” Donya demanded.
“Start a fire. This plain’s a tinderbox, and the wind’s straight at them. Quick!”
Anguish flitted over her. “I dreaded you’d say that,” she uttered, word by saddle-hammered word. “No. Destroy land ... willingly? No. I’ll slay you myself if you try.”
His wrath exploded. “You mole!” he roared. “Will you think, this single hour in your life? We—we alone—carry the warning. What Sadfr plans.” To Krona: “Unless the Rogaviki yield, the Barommians will slaughter your game beasts. Every herd, throughout the Northlands. They can do it. Is that news worth a few square miles which’ll grow back? Have you slipped the leash on your own mind?”
Donya groaned. Krona covered her face. The fingers on that hand bent until tendons stood forth and nails whitened. When she looked up, her voice barely won through the noise of their haste: “He speaks truth. We must.”
It took another minute for Donya to gasp, “Aye, then.”
Triumph bugled in Josserek.
He didn’t expect either of them could bring herself to the deed. He halted long enough to break several branches off a shrub and collect deadwood. Riding again, with difficulty he made his snapper ignite the leaves. Thereafter the whole bundle soon caught.
Zigzag he went. Now he leaned over left, now right, and swept his torch across bush or grass. Redness cracked aloft. A wavefront of it ran from him, rearward. Flames billowed and brawled, smoke blew off them like black spindrift, ash swirled foam-white over suddenly charred bottom. He barely saw the Outrunners mill away, barely heard their maniac yells.
They might have ridden around the conflagration before it grew too big. But they weren’t completely insane. Victims who had nothing to lose could well get them trapped, to roast alive. They fled. The flames hounded them.
Insane? Josserek thought as he stopped. His horse shuddered and panted beneath him, deep racking breaths like Donya’s where she wept. The wind from the Ice tossed mane, fanned off sweat agleam on hide, skirled louder than the burning. If madwomen is what they truly are, it’s a Rogavikian madness.
And ... maybe what broke their will against us was not caution but horror. Maybe even they find someone who fires the land is a thing too grisly to meet. For they are, after all, Rogaviki themselves.
“It is done.” Krona’s grief sounded as if from very remotely.
Resolution came. “No,” Josserek answered both. “It is begun.”
“What mean you?”
He lifted his head on high. “I mean that I’m through with being led. Donya, we should have told them at the Station and in the camp what we know. Never mind if they went wild. The word we bear would not die with us, as it almost did today. And it may be the single thing which can bring them together.
“You don’t think like soldiers, you Northfolk. The time is overpast when you’d better learn. The kiths have merely cared about their home territories. At most, when one was invaded, volunteers came from others to help—more for adventure, I’ll bet my sword hand, than in forethought.
“You’ll change now, or you’ll go under. The whole Northfolk, from Wilderwoods to Tantian Hills, have got to bring their force to bear on this enemy. And they can’t keep on following the herds till their usual Landmeeting to decide, either. They have got to meet fast.
“Do you hear me, Donya?”
CHAPTER 14
Sidfr had lingered three days at Owlhaunt, though he knew his army wondered and whispered, before a courier brought news that hauled him away. .
“—yes, sir, a squadron of the Golden Jaguar regiment—”
“Which?” Sidfr interrupted.
“Uh, the Khella Spears. They came on a band of natives,
bigger than usual. Colonel Felgai thinks the hunters have begun combining their gangs. Like always, these didn’t give a chance for parley, they attacked. And they inflicted heavy losses. They had a new weapon, you see, sir. Nests of hornets they’d been transporting around, and slung into the midst of the troop. When horses bolted, they cut out individual soldiers and, three or four against one, women fighting beside men, they killed nearly half. The survivors withdrew, regrouped, sent for reinforcements. The enemy meanwhile took position on a rock outcrop. The whole regiment has failed to dislodge them. A winning push would mean awful casualties. Since the Captain General was nearby, Colonel Felgai sent me to report and ask for orders.”
The Khella Spears—among the finest in my host— broken by a pack of savages, twisted through Sidfr.
“We can keep them bottled till they die, sir,” the courier volunteered. He was a hardbitten little bowlegged veteran, a Barommian of the old sort who thought for himself and told his officers straight out. “But that’ll tie us all down. You see, enough men ’ud be needed to prevent a sally that it’d be too dangerous for the rest to fare about.”
“Aye,” Sidfr tugged his chin. “A half day’s ride from here? Snatch what rest you can. We leave in an hour.” To his adjutant, a Rahfdian: “Arrange for fresh horses and an escort of, ng-ng, six.”
“Sir, no,” the man protested. “That few?”
“I’d not counsel the Captain General to it as rule, in this land o’ fiends,” the courier said. “But we’ve cleared the river road as far as we’ve gone. I traveled here alone, didn’t I?”
“Six,” repeated Sidfr. “Now, dismissed. Both of you.” Alone in the main room, he let his heart fly free. Those were Hervar yonder. Might Donya be among them? He felt his knees quiver, the tiniest bit. Foolish, foolish. The chances are grotesquely against. His scolding slid off his hope. Why wouldn’t she strike homeward? And these are the environs of her winter dwelling.
Anderson, Poul - Novel 18 Page 13