by Tanith Lee
For two days the armies of Ammath, So-Ess, and Kmiss rumbled and clattered into Za. There was a great deal of noise and confusion, but I heard little of it, nor of the dreadful clock. I had sent for a physician, and, sorting out from among his herbs and drugs things my time with Uasti had taught me to recognize, I made myself a sleeping draft. It seemed absurd I had not thought of it before. For two nights and the day between I slept without waking. I opened my eyes in an oddly silent dawn, and they were gone, Vazkor and his war-force and the wagons of their train.
I rose, bathed and dressed, and called Mazlek to me.
“Is there more of the fighting force to pass through Za?”
“Yes, goddess,” he said, “there are several blocks of troops still to come, and a great deal of foot. They’ll be marching through the City for many days.”
I told him we were going to join Vazkor, and he seemed surprised but pleased at this prospect of action. Yet it was a strange business. I waited patiently until the fourth day after Vazkor’s departure. In the afternoon five hundred riders and two hundred on foot arrived from Ammath, under the command of a huge blond man, fully armed for the march, as his men were not. They quartered themselves under the walls in the palace field, or found billets in the city, and it was a noisy night. At dark, lit by the torches of my escort, I crossed the short grass among the tent lanes, and arrived at the vast scarlet pavilion. Under a black cloak I wore the full regalia of the goddess. The sentries knew me at once, and within minutes I had entered and was facing the nervous, startled commander. He had been drinking not long since, and was at great pains to conceal the fact. He gave me a tall chair and paced about the table, not knowing what to do with me.
“Commander,” I said at last, when his jerky courtesies had petered out, “I have been expecting your answer all day.”
“My—my answer!” he exclaimed, stopping still.
“To fit my men for the march.”
His unmasked eyes were round and stupefied.
“I can see, commander,” I said, “the messengers did not reach you. I am to ride with my husband the overlord on this campaign. The honor of arming me has been left to Ammath.”
His face red with shock, he began to apologize and assure me of immediate concurrence with the wishes of the overlord.
It entailed a delay of two days for Ammath, but nevertheless Mazlek and his eighty were superbly fitted from among the march-wagons, both for themselves and their horses. The commander nervously inquired what I would choose for myself, but the armor was no use to me at all. They do not, as a rule, make it for women, and so it cannot be fitted secondhand; in addition to which, every piece was far too large and bulky, and would probably have fallen off the instant my horse achieved a gallop. I chose only knives, therefore, and a long bright sword without a device. When he began to protest that I must be fitted separately—further delay of many days, and, in addition, iron breastpieces which would chafe me raw—I told him I needed only to attack, not to defend. He cleared his throat and nodded, assuming me, I suppose, clothed in my god-head and invulnerable. Yet every hurt I would suffer from, even if I could not die. It simply did not seem important. I do not think I had even visualized battle as such, I was thinking only of how Vazkor had determined to shut me away in Za, and that I would not be shut.
During this time, a cohort of So-Ess rode in and out of Za, and soldiery from Za itself went clattering under the vaulted archway, southward. The last night, as I sat late in my apartments, preparing a formal letter to my host, the yellow-crested Javhovor, one of my women ran in to me and informed me he had come in person.
He entered and bowed deeply, and fidgeted with his mask. I asked him what he wanted.
“Goddess, pardon me, but I understood you were to remain here, in Za.”
“How did you understand such a thing?”
“Lord Vazkor . . .” He hesitated. “The overlord entrusted your well-being to my care. He—explained matters. Your delicate condition . . .”
I looked at him stonily, and he flushed.
“Delicate?” I asked him. “Why?”
“The—pregnancy,” he got out in a throaty whisper.
It was at once laughable and macabre.
“The Lord Vazkor is, I am afraid, quite mistaken,” I said. “Therefore you have no need to dissuade me from going, and indeed, I should strongly advise you not to do so. You will dismiss your guards from my doors at once. Any further attempts to restrain my person will be dealt with by my own guard. You will remember who I am and the Powers I possess. Did you wish me to demonstrate?”
He whitened and drew back, trying to find adequate words.
“I understand your dilemma,” I said kindly. “You are torn between your desire to obey Vazkor, and your desire not to anger me. However, it is really quite easy. I am here, and Vazkor is not. Now go, and do not trouble me with any of this again.”
He bowed, and withdrew shakily, and I never saw the guard I had guessed he brought with him, poor confused fool.
* * *
We rode out at daybreak into hard bright sunlight.
The road sloped down from the platform of the city, out into the white empty desert, yet it seemed very beautiful that day, sparkling like diamond under the clear pale sky. Far away to the east, I could make out now the faintest ghosts of those mountains which led to and enclosed Eshkorek Arnor. There a man had sat, waiting on the Council at Za for the death of a tortoise, and Vazkor’s word, “Now you are Javhovor.”
We made good time, for the wagons were few and did not slow us overmuch. At night the metal walls went up, the fires flared. Mazlek would come to me and teach me a little of war, but not too much; tired from the riding, I found sleep easy and pleasant. I was treated with great respect and courtesy. Ammath’s commander clearly thought he was pleasing everyone. No doubt he was actually looking forward to the time when he might deliver me safe, honored and duly armed to my delighted husband.
I gathered Vazkor had set the meeting place for all his forces at a spot they called Lion’s Mouth. Near this place, where great rock hills thrust up to make a stockade around Purple Valley, was a narrow pass leading downward. In winter such passes were blocked by snow, and there was some speculation and discontent as to how Vazkor planned to make a way through, or how long the wait would be until the spring thaw did the work for him. In any case there was grumbling. A winter campaign across the War March was a rare and uncomfortable thing.
As we rode nearer to the hills, we passed into a strange new landscape—frozen water courses, thin sprinkling of woodland, the trees stripped, the branches broken by snow. There were a few villages here, and the usual soldierly thefts took place, but there was no rape this time, perhaps only because they kept their women better hidden. Here also we began to catch up with and pass the long grinding processions of great wheeled cannon, siege-towers and other machines of war, dragged along by chains of mules or dead-eyed dark men. They left great black rut-trails over the white ground. Overseers prowled along the straining lines, long whips flicking up and down like the writhing tongues of serpents. On the tenth day two mules dropped dead at once as we passed, their hearts burst by the great metal ram they were hauling. The men with the whips cursed and shouted angrily, but it caused a great deal of laughter among the Ammath soldiers. I turned my head away from the twin shapes lying like a pattern on the snow. I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.
* * *
The rocky hills grew and hardened into purple darkness ahead of us. The broken woodland clustered and withdrew. Birds embroidered the sky from time to time, and dawn brought a scattering of white wolves with it, nosing about the camp walls, and howling their flesh-lust.
&n
bsp; “There are animals in the hills, then?” I asked Mazlek.
“A few, goddess.”
“More now,” I said, nodding around me at the soldiers and horses. He grinned.
Having sighted the hills, it took us two days to reach them, three to scale the first slopes, for they go up and down, and there is no road or short way around. On the morning of the fourth day of climbing the Ammath commander rode back to me politely.
“Up there, goddess”—he pointed—“the Lion’s Head. Top it, and we’ll reach the Mouth—probably before sunset.”
I looked where he indicated, and saw a great formless chunk of black and snowed-white rock. It did not to me look even remotely like a lion, though I suppose in days long past it must have, presumably.
“There are the jowls,” he was proudly telling me, “and the eye, and that stratification forms the mane.”
“Ah, yes,” I said.
Topping the head, a horse fell and broke a foreleg and they killed it. The shadows lengthened, the sky was low-slung and empty of sunset color. A sense of coldness and melancholy seeped into me. I had begun to fear my meeting with Vazkor after all.
There was a twisting track now, looming rock walls on either side, then an opening, and below a great snow-bound dip, terraced and falling away at its far end to a piled-up chaos of giant boulders. Beyond them there seemed to be a drop, where the heads of other rocks stood out faintly in the thickening color of dusk. In the dip itself a vast camp stretched out, milling like a hive. Already the red points of torches. Smoke from fires drifted up. There must be thousands grouped here, apart from the wagons, machinery, and picketed animals. Away to the east of the dip natural arches opened into further levels where other parts of the armies and their lights were moving back and forth.
I was at the front now, behind the men of Ammath, flanked by Mazlek on my left, the scarlet commander on my right. We picked a way down the rocks. I could not help but remember the ravine camp, and a dismal panic was growing on me helplessly.
Sentries challenged us. We rode between the tent lanes now, smoke, firelight, men moving out of our way. Soon I should see the black pavilion.
A man standing by the commander’s horse was saying something. . . .
“No, sir. The overlord has moved ahead to the lower camp—two days away now, sir.”
Slowly the words penetrated my brain. Vazkor—was gone.
Now the man was bowing to me. My pavilion should be got up at once, and all things arranged for my comfort. They were very surprised to see me, but it was an honor, an encouragement to them all to have my holy person in their midst.
It was true, my arrival seemed to have had a peculiar effect on the great camp. They appeared genuinely excited and glad of my presence. And it was the men of Kmiss, Za, So-Ess, and Ammath whose pleasure seemed doubled. I was still special for them, because I was not theirs. They cheered me as I rode now, and a sort of warmth ran through me—relief that Vazkor was elsewhere—and a sense of my own Power so abruptly evident to me in this unexpected place called Lion’s Mouth.
4
I was very grateful that Vazkor had not been there. He had apparently ridden ahead with some two hundred men of Ezlann and So-Ess, to a lower area near to the pass, where a perfect view presented itself of the valley terrain. There he made a new camp, plotting the moves of the game, while the last stragglers arrived at the Lion’s Mouth above. The command of the Mouth had gone to Kazarl, Javhovor of So-Ess—a logical move, since only he, of all Vazkor’s fellow Javhovors in White Desert, had come in person with his armies. The troops of Kmiss, Za, Ammath, and Eshkorek had come under the lords’ younger brothers, elder sons, cousins, or nephews. Age, easy-living, and general disinclination had caused this absence of the first three; besides, I could see Vazkor would rather have the youthful and the willing on such a venture. No doubt he had taken measures to see no plots hatched among the figureheads left at home. As to Eshkorek’s new master, he was too fresh in his seat to run out of it so quickly. Probably he had remained at Vazkor’s express order.
My first full day at the Mouth was taken up with two enormous small things. First the business of getting from them the winelike drink on which I now so comfortably lived. I had brought enough of it for my journey here, but all wells run dry at last. With Vazkor there had been no problem, for he had seen to it. Alone, I must break down their barriers of embarrassment, describe it, and then witness its furtive and deferential arrival at my tent. I had not lost their admiration, nevertheless, for none of them could live on such a flimsy thing. My second trouble I considered a foolish one, yet it nagged at me. My bleeding had long since assumed a predictable rhythm, presenting itself to me after every unit of twenty days, and no longer distressing me in any way, being light and painless, and lasting only forty-eight hours or less. Now, twenty-five days had passed and the expected guest was absent. I reasoned with myself that very likely the journey here had upset things, but I was not consoled. A stupid, icy little certainty was growing in my brain, though I had not yet voiced it, even in my thoughts.
The second day at Lion’s Mouth, I turned my mind to other matters. Soldiers had been marching in, in regular bursts, and the huge camp had grown even more crowded and sprawling. I sent Dnarl with two others to bear my greetings to the various High Commanders, Kazarl among them, and ask them to attend me at the twentieth hour in my pavilion. I knew they would respectfully come, and also that they would be very unsure of what should be said to a female deity roosting in the center of a war-camp. But they found it was easy for them. Throughout the two hours of their company, I spoke only a few words, and these were really promptings. I gave them free and full rein to talk about the war—its history, and its future campaigns. They had no notion Vazkor did not want me here. They thought it would please him that they had attempted to inform me of all they knew, and when they discovered that I could apparently follow what they said, and seemed both interested and involved with their prowess, they came, I could see, to a new opinion of me. I was, they would assess it, a woman, but with a man’s mind; it shone out of their faces, this high tribute of the human male. They left me in good spirits, impressed with their goddess, having taught her a little of what to expect in the war, and a good deal about their own characters.
In the morning I rose early, and walked about the tent lanes, Mazlek, Dnarl, and Slor behind me. There were more starings than obeisances, yet the soldiers I stopped and spoke to seemed both awed and pleased to have been singled out by the Risen One. Tomorrow would see this camp on the move to join Vazkor at the lower site, and already preparations for departure were in progress. Kazarl appeared and took me on a tour of the war machines, and an inspection of the drilling of swordsmen and horses. In the archers’ quarter men were resining their bows, a few on horseback aiming practice shots at a swaying man of straw and sacking, others, on foot, at random targets hung upon poles.
I remarked to Kazarl that I had omitted to choose a bow for myself, and that I would now do so. He seemed amazed at each new thing I showed myself capable of, and this was no exception. He called a man, however, and we went among the stores, and after a while, I chose what seemed to handle best. It had no intimate feel to it, like those I had used with Darak—which had been made for me—but I hoped a union might come between us in time. I took it outside with some shafts, and made short work of the colored eyes of the targets. There was a murmur of interest around me from the archers, and I knew word would spread.
There were other things I did, perhaps foolish things, for I was not sure I would be successful at them, but then, I had very little time. I fought a practice bout of swords and knives with a thin and devious fighter among the officers’ pavilions. I think at first he held off in alarm at the situation, but after a while my skill convinced him he had better do something about me. We were judged on points and ended as equals. I think I could have beaten him, though I will not swear to it, but I did not
want any jealousy or anger from what I did. In an open place there were horse herds from the mountain valleys of Eshkorek Arnor, still wild, that men were breaking bit by bit for battle work. I had not liked this business since I watched Darak ride Sarroka in the tribal krarl and I had learned that to conquer a horse means to snap its spirit also. Yet I singled out a white stallion—the pride of the herd, un-gelded, untamed, and furious at this whole world.
“That one,” I said.
Kazarl began to protest, but I politely told him to be quiet. They got the white one into a separate pen by the use of goads and curses, and I jumped in after it. I see now it was indeed a foolish thing to do, but at the time the deed had its own perverse logic.
The white one turned and eyed me with the two blazing red wheels which passed for eyes, and clawed up the soil with alternate forefeet. I had told them not to hold him for me, and I hardly think in any case that they could. He swore at me, and stood back on his hind limbs in that impossible gesture of horses, and while he balanced there on the knife edge of his anger, I ran to him, and aside at the last instant before he could swing to me, and, as he dropped, I got his mane, and my foot on his icy side, and was up. He gave a leap, all four feet in the air, that seemed to shake every bone loose in my spine. I clung to his neck and hair, but my arms would not reach far enough around his huge neck to restrict the windpipe, in that old but necessary trick of breakers. The camp, the rocks, the sky broke up in small fragments, and began to whirl about our heads. It was a ghastly ride, and I thought more than once that now I had ruined my plans and would be tossed off, and probably eaten, for these wild herds from Eshkorek had a reputation for devouring men. Even so, I cannot deny there was a sort of panicky pleasure in it—it was a real thing in the midst of experiences and troubles that seemed quite unreal.
The end came very suddenly. No slowing down, just an abrupt finish to all movement. I do not know how long the ordeal lasted, but quite a while I think. There were crowds of men around the pen, staring, cheering. Kazarl was masked and unreadable, yet he held up an arm in salute.