The Birthgrave

by Tanith Lee

  Strange, strange, they called me Imma for their peace of mind, and for that same peace, they thought of me as a prince and a man.

  * * *

  And then came the night of the fifth day, and I lay in my own tent—a piece of hide Maggur had constructed for me—and heard an angry grunt and a shout of abuse outside. I opened the tent flap and saw Maggur and Darak glaring at each other in the starlight. I had not realized till now that Maggur and Kel and Giltt took turns to guard my sleeping place.

  “Goddess, tell this oaf to get out of my way before I gut him like a fish,” Darak snarled.

  Maggur seemed to recollect himself. He stepped aside and grumbled something.

  “Maggur thought you were the man who came earlier and tried to take his woman,” I said, the lie sweet on my tongue, for I had seen how much Maggur was mine, and it was a safeness, for all my doubts.

  Darak swore, and strode by the bandit, by me, into my tent.

  I nodded to Maggur, and went in too, letting the flap fall shut.

  There was room under the hide for me, but not much for Darak. He crouched down, and when I sat facing him, he said: “The last time I did this, you used a rock on me.”

  My heart, which always roused like a dog when he was near me, began to throb harder. I remembered him lying in the cindery shale, his eyes shut and his face defenseless, and how I had run from him. So slowly.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, looking into my eyes, “we ride down to the River Road. That is the way the caravan goes to Ankurum.”

  “Ankurum?” I said. The name seemed at once alien and familiar.

  “Across the Plains, in the Low of the Mountain Ring. A great trade center, one of many where the old cities beyond the Mountains and the Water shop for their war gear. I won’t tell you all of it, but the caravan is mine. Or will be. You’ll ride with us.”

  “Why? Your women were left at home I thought.”

  “Women. You’re a goddess, remember. I’ve heard what the black man has taught you in five days. The rest I’ll teach you.”

  His eyes were glittering in the dark tent. There was hardly any light from the little brazier of smoky coals, yet I seemed to see him very clearly. Our eyes met hard and fastened together. The cool night was burning. The sound of insects in the grass sounded whirring and brittle in the fiery crystal silence.

  “That’s all,” Darak said. His voice was soft and slightly slurred. He did not move.

  I thought of the day he had come to the temple, the crashing screen, the day when I had taken Shullatt’s jade. I thought of night among the burned woods by the lake, of the first night at the ravine when he had gone to the tall dark girl with her cloudy hair. I thought of dawn by the streams when he had said to me: “Besides, goddess, the gods accept only necessities. What they really want, they take without asking.” And I had known inside me what he had said, and been unable to know it with my mind. Had all this been between us from the beginning, then, delay pointless and unnecessary? “No, Darak,” I said, “that is not all.”

  His teeth showed, not in a smile, and his hands caught my shoulders very hard, gathered the golden shirt in fistfuls, and ripped it open and away. He pulled me near him, and his mouth was on my breasts, but I said: “Do you have new clothes for me, Darak, if you tear all these?”

  “Yes,” he muttered. He touched the mask briefly. “I’ll leave you that but nothing else.”

  He pulled the boots and leggings off, the tunic, the belt, all of it. The belt buckle clashed against the brazier. His own clothes went next with more noise. I thought Maggur might come running in anger, but soon everything was silent except for the insects and the sounds of our own breathing.

  He was impatient, but I made him be still a little while. I wanted to touch his body—lean-muscled as a lion’s, bronze and gold, the skin incredibly smooth over the hardness under it, except where fights had scarred it. Love of this body, which had made me so weak in everything before, had stiffened every part of me now, as it had stiffened him. My fingers brushed and cupped the burning phallus, and he pushed me back, his hands cruder and more sure than mine.

  And then the breath went hissing out of him. His body grew cooler against me. I held him fast.

  “No,” I said. “Do you expect your goddesses to be made as other women?”

  A sort of shudder went through him, and a kind of laugh.

  “You have what’s necessary for this at least,” he said.

  And there was no more talk.

  * * *

  The insects continued their noises in the dark as if they had never stopped, though we had stopped them for a while, and all things but ourselves.

  “What are you?” he said suddenly.

  He lay over me, his face against my hair.

  “I have no more reason to know than you, Darak.”

  But when his voice went on, he had only heard me with his ears, not in his thoughts.

  “Woman but not woman. Yet more woman than any other breed. And yet a different woman from women. Goddess—yes, perhaps I believed it. And then, riding from Makkatt, I saw the red cloud on the mountain by night, and I came to ask you in the tent if you knew—and I saw Krill spitting the snake poison out, while you sat there so prim and stiff. And you were no goddess. And then Makkatt burst open again, and finished them. But you—” He stopped. It was so dark now, I felt him lift and lean over me but did not see. He touched my thighs, my belly, my breasts. “You’ve never done this before, and how I know it’s a mystery for there was nothing a man had to break. Virgin, and yet knowing. What are you?” His hand slid across my throat, my hair to the rolled back folds of the mask.

  “No,” I said. “Darak, you took all else, but you said you would leave me that.”

  His hands left me, and his body left me. He stood a little way up in the low tent, and dressed.

  “Darak,” I said, but he did not answer me.

  He went out into the dark, and it might never have been, that first time.

  5

  I sensed Karrakaz near me in my sleep, and strove to wake, and could not. Through the oval door I looked at the flickering color in the stone basin of the altar, and it drew me, sucked me in—only the green coolness could save me—and I did not know where it was. My hands went to the bandit jade around my neck, but in this place it was black and dull and useless as iron.

  A great hand took my shoulder, and shook me out of the nightmare.

  “Maggur,” I whispered.

  “Nearly dawn,” he said. “Darak’s men will be riding soon, to the River Road.”

  He didn’t seem perturbed by my nakedness. He held out a piece of shimmery stuff—green and purple and red.

  “I came earlier,” he said, “after he went away.” He grinned at the torn shirt. “I got a new one—off a woman, an Imma like you.”

  Darak had not come for me. Had he expected me to recall on my own, or had he wanted to leave me behind at last? I dressed, and Maggur dismantled the tent. Outside, a little way off, Giltt and Kel were waiting with ponies and my little black horse, all saddlebags packed and ready. They had arranged I should go to Darak with my own state it seemed.

  I rode ahead, Maggur a pace behind me, the other two paired behind him.

  I heard other harness jinking soon. A clearing, faintly greening in the first hint of day, spangled with dew. A few heads turned around to look at us.

  “Darak’s woman and her men,” they said.

  Maggur grinned.

  Darak looked up from what he was doing, and nodded to me. That was all. A man came and handed me a long-knife, which I stuck through my belt. The other horses were being stripped of their bells and jingling medallions. Kel saw to ours, and Maggur put them away in one of the saddle pouches.

  I could smell the dawn.

  Darak was on his pony. He held up one arm, and the silence deepened.
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  “Now listen. We’ll reach the ford at noon. The caravan will go by anything from an hour to three hours later, depending on the time they’re making. The signal to take them is a wolf’s howl. Don’t move before it; when it comes, move fast. Remember the others across the water. Head runaways back toward them. Kill every man, starting with their guard, but not a scratch on the horses.”

  He turned the pony and began to ride off into the woods.

  We followed.

  * * *

  There seemed nothing wrong in it then, that we should be riding to kill men, knowingly. They were hardened and unthinking, and I was so contemptuous of human life. And there was hurt and anger in me, too.

  The sun came up, blotching the leaves acid green. We rode downward all the time, the trees thinning in places, leaving lower slopes visible that faded away into the flatter ground. The river seemed to move with us, sometimes on show, flaring with sunlight; always in our ears.

  We reached the ford, crossing a little before noon.

  The river bent like a bow in front of us, narrowing at a point to the left. Through the screens of foliage and thick fern, I made out the broad track—the route the caravans took, which led toward the great South Road. The track halted on the far bank, continued on the near bank. In between, stakes stood up in the shallow water, indicating, with blackened notches, how high the river would run in flood. It was about twenty feet across.

  I had gathered from snatches of talk around the wood camp that this was to be a new place of attack. The merchants were accustomed to trouble farther out, where the track met the South Road. They would be fairly easy as yet, and surprise was a great thing. But they had a strong and vicious guard—Maggur had told me as much.

  “Those ones,” Maggur said, “they train them in the northern towns from childhood. A man can boast forty scars on his body at fifteen years. Teach them to steal from street markets and beat ’em when they’re caught. They bring them up on cruelty like a mean dog, and like mean dogs they grow. They bite, so watch their teeth, the ones in their belts, that is. And any blow, make sure you kill with it. Pain only makes ’em mad, they’re so used to it—inspires them, you could say.”

  We settled down to wait. Bread and salt meat and beer in leather bottles went around, but Darak’s men hardly made a sound. Even going off to urinate, they moved as stealthily as snakes. I began to see why most of them had been picked from the wood camp, where the bandits learned tree-craft as a matter of course, stalking deer or other prey.

  It grew very hot. Sunlight boiled its green bubbles in the branches, and a bluish mist rose from the fallen leaves underfoot. The river was a cataract of polished opals.

  Suddenly a woodhawk screeched. I glanced at Maggur. He nodded. It was a signal, and they were coming, the fat stupid merchant men, and their terrible outriding guard.

  * * *

  A rustle, crushing of ferns, tramp of horses’ hooves, big horses these, roll of wagon wheels through undergrowth.

  The first two riders appeared. Guard. I felt Maggur tense a little, but he made no sound. They were black, too, but it was black cloth and hardened leather, not skin. Every inch of them was covered and armored, even their hands in black gauntlets, even their faces—like mine—masked. But these masks were different, for they were made in the likeness of black bone skulls, from which grew black, coarse plaited manes of horsehair. Their horses were enormous and black also. Cold ran down my spine, and my hand clenched on my long-knife. There was something about them—something. I felt the need to shiver, and spit the taste of their nearness out of my mouth.

  They rode into the mid of the river, looked about them; then one shouted something in a high clear voice. At once others appeared, and then the swaying canopied wagons drawn by ponies. The procession began to cross the river.

  A wolf howled nearby, hoarse and urgent.

  I had a glimpse of the black skull faces turning in surprise, and then we had moved.

  There was one sound and one movement only, or so it seemed in the first seconds. The merchants’ cries of panic, neighing splashing horses, the shouts of Darak’s men bursting free from tension at last, the rushing forward with no chance to draw aside and have no part in it, were all one imperative thing.

  The iron long-knife was in my right hand. There was no time to think. “Make sure you kill,” Maggur had said. The knife swung in an arc. The great black body toppled slowly over and away from me, not entirely black now, but red as well.

  The horse under me was level and good. It danced forward and a black guard leaned down at me, and his own knife—very long and hooked at the end—slashed out. I caught the hook on my own weapon, and pulled at him. It seemed easy. He too fell slowly, and the spiked knife in my other hand dug into him, twisted, and came free. Blood and other stuff splattered up to my elbow. I saw it, but it did not seem to be my arm on which it spilled.

  There was a little lull around me then. On every side there was the mess and uncertainty of fighting. The horses were staggering in the stream, and merchants and boys were running into each other in the water, shrieking. It was almost comic, but there was too much terror for that. One man was wriggling and straining on the driver’s box, trying to get his team around. I recalled that the merchants must be killed too. I rode at him, and the knife went in and out and he rolled sideways into the frothy pink water, his eyes full of reproach.

  Maggur charged past, grinning, a black-maned mask in one hand, dripping knife in the other.

  Across the river the others of Darak’s ambush were milling in to close the gap.

  I felt sick abruptly. Evil was on me and I knew it. A kind of scream came whirling up from my belly and out of my mouth. I clamped the horse between my thighs, and kicked the spurs into it. I lifted the long-knife in a double grasp, over my head, letting the other one go. I plunged back into the chaos, and my arms swung left and right, and the knife spun at the end of them like a wheel of silver pain. I do not know how many I killed, but I killed many. There was a ringing in my head, and an anger in me, and a blood-red roaring triumph. I did not see much of what I did until I was in the river, and flung backward from my little horse, which in its turn lolled forward and went under. The cold, the taste of blood and river bitterness brought me out of the death-dream. I staggered to my feet, stumbling on stones and bodies under the froth. At that moment three of the skull guard came leaping in at me. The horses’ bodies, on the great black stretch of that leap, seemed to stop still in the air. Their hooves were buzzing iron hammers falling on me. I struggled, and thought I was going down in quicksand; I could not seem to get my balance. They came like huge black birds, the water breaking like glass. One hoof struck me, a glancing blow—more like a quick hot hand, brushing back the hair from my neck. I fell again, and the hook-knives came flaring over me.

  A man roared, and Maggur flung himself at them seemingly from out of nowhere. I glimpsed Giltt. Little Kel was there too, or his arrow. A guard jumped forward from his saddle, and fell near me, the flight just showing between his shoulder blades. But Maggur was spinning down also, out of sight, and the two remaining blacknesses had reached and caught my arms.

  I was lifted up by them, carried backward between them very fast, across the river. I was aware that they would half stun me on the nearest tree, then finish me as slowly as they had time for. It pleased them to do this to me, perhaps because I had killed some friend of theirs—if such men had friends or lovers.

  But then a shock went through them. I looked up and saw Darak behind us. Both his knives had gone, flung one into the back of each of my captors. They toppled and their grip was still tight on me. I thought I should be torn in two, but the grasp lessened at the last second, and I fell backward into the water with them.

  Darak leaned over me and lifted me up.

  “Both your knives are gone,” I said. It had seemed foolish of him to let go both of them to save me. />
  “The fight’s over,” he said.

  I stared around me, and it was true.

  “Maggur,” I said. “He came at them, and fell—”

  Darak’s hand came swift and fast across my face. I stumbled and he caught my belt to steady me.

  “I came at them, too, bitch. Thank me for it.”

  “I thank you,” I said.

  I picked my way among the debris in the river, past him, back to the bank.

  * * *

  They cleared the bodies from the water and burned them, then organized the stuff in the wagons. I did not see any of this. Kel and I sat together in the shade, under a leather awning, where Maggur lay. Of the bandits only four were dead, but one of them was Giltt. My attackers had managed it as he ran at them, and I had not even seen them do it. Other wounds were few and not serious. Only Maggur had been badly hurt.

  “There was a fourth one, Imma—he swung at Maggur from the back with an iron club they carry. I got him too, after.”

  I had wiped the blood away and cleaned the deep cut, and the skull seemed whole under my fingers, but Maggur did not wake up, and I could sense a sort of death on him.

  We sat a long while, Kel and I. Then he said: “Imma—can’t you . . . ?”

  “What?”

  “They said you’re a healer.”

  A little bright shock went through my brain.

  “You think I can save Maggur?” I asked softly.

  “Of course.”

  There was no doubt in his face.

  * * *

  There was mist in the morning, and Darak came.

  He glanced at Kel asleep, and Maggur sleeping too, healthily and deeply.

  “Today we are merchants,” he said. “We go on to the South Road, protected by our skull-guard, of course. The bandits are rife hereabouts they tell me.”