by J. S. Bangs
She lay in a storeroom, just long enough for her to stretch out. Her hands were bound in leather thongs and tied to a post. The fibers chafed her wrists, red and raw from her four days of captivity. It would have been worse, except that Keshlik came four times a day to bring her food, unbind her ropes, and massage her wrists. Sometimes this seemed like kindness. Sometimes she stopped hating him. But the muscles of her back ached from the way the child sat inside her, and her feet continued to swell, and she remembered her hatred.
A Yakhat face appeared in the doorway. It was Juyut, the younger one, whom she guessed was Keshlik’s brother or nephew. He glanced in at her then left, shouting a response to someone unseen.
Keshlik appeared a moment later. He spoke a few soft words, then knelt and began to undo the ropes binding her hands.
“What’s this?” she asked. He had no tray of food, and it was too early to eat.
He grunted. In a moment, her hands were free, and she began rubbing her wrists. Keshlik stood and offered her his hand.
She looked at it and continued massaging her chafed skin. She wasn’t about to accompany him anywhere if she could help it.
He bent and grabbed her arm just below the elbow, then pulled her roughly upright. An arrow of pain stabbed through her feet, and her legs folded like reeds, unable to uphold her body. Keshlik caught her under her shoulder before she hit the ground. He propped her up so her feeble legs barely touched the ground, and he helped her limp forward from the storeroom.
Her body had discovered all sorts of new pains in her four days tied up. Her legs shrieked with the effort of holding up her pregnant body, and her spine burned and creaked as Keshlik guided her forward. The baby squirmed in her belly, protesting the movement. Uya winced at the light as the warehouse’s shadow slipped behind them, then opened her eyes.
The old market square was full of men on horses, packs brimming with plunder, clouds of yellow dust, carts creaking under their loads. The carts were pulled by stout Prasei ponies, looking dwarfish next to the tall, slender Yakhat breeds. Keshlik pulled her to a cart half-filled with furs and hemp sacks and motioned for her to sit. Were they all leaving, or just her? She heaved herself and her belly up onto the cart and took up a position she hoped she could hold for a few hours. Keshlik tied her hands to the rail of the cart.
He grunted and said something in their abrasive dialect. She spat at him and tugged at the rope. She had plenty of slack to move, but the knots themselves were tight.
She laid back against the hemp sacks of plunder that filled up the rest of the cart. Something sharp and brittle dug into her back. She shifted once or twice, unable to find a comfortable position, and heard the sack’s contents scrape together. The bag shifted in a new direction, and something clattered against the boards of the cart.
She glanced over her shoulder. It was a mussel shell, the sort used for jewelry. Her breath stopped.
The savages had no idea how sharp a broken shell could be. She quickly closed her hand over the shell and tucked it into the waist of her skirt. She folded her hands in front of her and shifted so that the shell was hidden between her and the other loot.
Her heart pounded. Keshlik rode back and forth across the square, talking to one group of men and then another, while carts and laden horses began to leave in batches.
No one had seen her grab the shell.
Finally Keshlik’s brother came out of the warehouse they’d slept in, carrying the orange and blue banner that had hung above the door, and a group of men converged around him, shouting and chanting. Keshlik said a few words, and the whole group moved out in a line, with Uya’s cart in the middle of the train.
The dogs had had their run of the city. Filth, filth everywhere. Perhaps a third of the lodges that Uya saw were burned down, leaving skeletons of charred wood over rotten beds of ash. Others had brutal trails of splintered wood, trampled rags, and broken pottery weeping from their entrances. Ancestor totems had been toppled, their painted faces defaced with mud and urine. Charnel heaps of bones blackened the ground where bodies had been piled and burned.
She chuckled in black mirth as they rode past the useless heap that remained of the earthworks. So much effort to defend the city, and they hadn’t saved anyone.
Keshlik and his brother rode in front of her at the head of the procession, a straggling line of horsemen and carts behind them. She sighed and leaned herself into the side rails of the cart. They entered the forest beyond the city, and the scar of the earthworks receded.
Despair tightened her throat. She had never been north of Prasa. She had never been far from her enna and their lodge, had never traveled with the men even as far as the little villages on the north shore of the bay. And now she was leaving, tied like an animal to a cart, with the city in ruins.
She fingered the hidden shell, then tugged it from its place and pressed it against the wood of the cart’s bed. The wheel hit a rock, the cart lurched, and her weight snapped the shell in half. She ran her finger over the edge, as sharp as a knife, then hid it in her fist.
They traveled without pause until after sunset. Keshlik left Uya tied to the cart while he and the warriors around him made camp, with small fires and bedrolls on the ground. The horses wandered into the forest in search of grass. Keshlik came to Uya with an old bedroll under one arm and loosed one end of the tie, leading her to a place a little ways from the main encampment. So he intended to give her privacy. Well, he would regret that.
He did not untie her, nor did he check what she clenched in her fist. He tied the other end of the rope binding her wrists to a nearby pine. A few moments later, he brought food and set it on her woolen bedroll: jerky, dry cheese with a strange smell, and a few leaves of pressed kelp looted from Prasa. He left without a word.
She ate only a few bites, despite her piercing hunger. She had to save something for her flight, regardless of the insistence of her stomach. The warriors gathered around the fire, talking in their gravelly tongue, while she sat atop her bedroll. Keshlik glanced her way every few minutes, but the rest of them ignored her.
Darkness fell. She lay down on the matted wool. She could look down the trade road and see a long line of glittering yellow fires trailing back toward Prasa. She would have to avoid them all. She stayed awake, determination firing her mind, as one by one, the warriors around the closest fire fell asleep.
Finally, only Keshlik and Juyut remained awake. After a last glance into the woods, Keshlik lay down, and his brother stood, stretching. Loosening his belt, he walked into the woods on the far side of the road.
Now. She took the shard of shell and sliced at the leather binding her hands. It bit and cut back a piece as long as a thumbnail. She kept cutting until the leather was ragged. Juyut returned from the shadows and stood over the fire. She tore at the leather with the shell one more time then pulled the ties apart with a snap.
Juyut looked her way. She froze.
For a long moment, the only sound was the beating of her heart. Then the warrior relaxed and resumed watching the heart of the fire.
Uya scooped up the remaining food and folded it into the corner of her blouse. She slipped off the bedroll and into the ferns with only a ghostly rustling, and she padded away into the forest.
The Powers smiled on her. The night was clear, and the moon half full. She could see just well enough to avoid the largest sticks and stones in her path as she scrambled through the ferny undergrowth away from the fire.
There was no commotion behind her. Had Juyut not heard her leave? She dared not believe that the Powers had blessed her as much as that.
The night grew chilly, and wisps of mist rose into the air. Her pace slowed. Her breath came hard, and her feet ached. The moon slipped beneath the peaks of the spruces in the west, and with its passing, the forest floor became as dark as ink. Only the cold, white stars lit her path. She could not stop until she had put enough distanc
e between herself and the warriors.
She went on, feeling with hands and toes for the obstacles in her path, until her foot slipped on a mossy stone. She tumbled to the ground.
She twisted to land on her back rather than her stomach, and the blow knocked the breath from her lungs. She struggled to breathe and watched the stars swim. Her back throbbed, and nausea rose from her stomach. Was the baby okay? Had they heard her? Had she fled far enough?
She tried to rise but collapsed back to the earth with a groan. It would have to be far enough, because she could go no further tonight. A little ways away, some low-hanging spruce boughs offered some shelter. She crawled to them then collapsed into the bed of needles. In an instant, she was asleep.
Uya awoke to rain dripping on her face. She sat up and shook a shower of water loose from a low-hanging pine branch. A quick glance at the sky brought a twist of fear to her stomach.
The sky was swaddled in clouds, and mist hovered over the tops of the spruces. In the murky gray light, she had no idea which way was east, and she was bereft of any landmark. She had only been this far from Prasa once, when her father had taken her with the men to the edge of the valley, to see where the pines grew short and let out onto the great yellow sea of grass. There were few villages near here, and she might wander for days before finding one. She didn’t even know which way to flee.
Downhill. The sea was downhill, and her only option was to follow the water to it.
She rose. The pain in her back had subsided, and her feet had grown numb with cold. But the worrying twitches in her stomach from the night before had stopped, and at least she wouldn’t feel the sharp twigs underfoot anymore. After checking her feet and finding them bloody and blue, she decided not to look again. She untied the corner of her blouse and ate a strip of jerky and a cube of cheese, then stumbled forward out of her shelter.
The forest sloped down gently to her right. She followed it, ferns soaking her skirt as she swished past them. Misty rain dripped down from the fog overhead, soaking her clothes in a few minutes and plastering her hair to her head. She began to shiver.
A fire. She would need a fire tonight—except that she had no dry wood, and nothing with which to light it. She didn’t even have a blanket. She had to keep walking. The heat of her movement was the only heat she had. She shivered again and fought the urge to weep.
The gray gradually brightened. Somewhere above the clouds, the sun was rising toward noonday, though the drizzle showed no signs of stopping. Hunger began to gnaw at her throat, but she denied it. She needed food, for herself and for the child, but she still needed to wait.
Then she heard the crackle of a footstep behind her.
Uya froze. In the distance, a man, his face the color of red clay, loped swiftly through the forest, looking toward the ground. In the next moment, he raised his eyes and saw her.
His shout splintered the peace of the forest.
Uya tried to run, but even as she turned, she knew it was hopeless. Her feet slipped on the mossy ground, and her belly shortened her stride.
The man was beside her, grabbing at her wrists and shoulders. She squirmed away and slid to the ground. The man jumped to where she had fallen and pinned her shoulders down.
She jerked and swatted at him once, twice, but it was futile. Her escape had lasted less than a day.
Chapter 11
Keshlik
Keshlik wound the bandages around the woman’s feet as tight as he could make them. “Does that help?”
Her expression was dead, blank. She had been mute since the scouting party carried her back to the caravan, and she’d let them tie her up with no more resistance than a doll. Her determination to escape had surprised him, but her failure seemed to have sapped that energy from her.
“I don’t know why you bothered going after her,” Juyut said from atop his horse. “You took her under Khou’s protection, but once she left…”
“So you let the plunder just get up and run away, now?” Keshlik checked the knots binding the woman to the cart then verified that nothing sharp was within her reach.
“The woman is plunder, now?”
“I’m giving her to Tuulo for a slave.”
“That’s not what you said before.”
Keshlik remounted Lashkat and whistled for the party to move. The cart jerked and moved forward. Lashkat whinnied at the pony pulling the cart then plodded forward next to Juyut and his mount.
“Maybe I changed my mind,” Keshlik said. “It amounts to the same thing.”
Juyut spat. “Nothing good can come of it. The woman has already been more trouble than she’s worth.”
Keshlik could not remember the last time that he had brought so many spoils into the Khaatat camp. The whole tribe came to meet the warriors, and their surprise and pleasure resounded off the walls of the yurts. But he already had more treasure than he could use. At the first opportunity he found Dhuja, who was examining a necklace of hammered silver.
“I brought a woman back from Prasa,” he told her.
“Is she as pretty as this?” she asked, holding up the looted jewelry.
“She’s pregnant. She needs to go into Khou’s circle with Tuulo.”
Dhuja looked up, her brows pinched into a scowl. “You brought a pregnant city-dweller woman here? Khou’s tits, why?”
“She is under Khou’s protection. I couldn’t kill her.”
Dhuja laughed. “I don’t think many people remember those old taboos.” But her scowl faded.
“So you can bring her into the circle? She will at least be company for Tuulo.”
“Does she speak any language that we know?”
“She may know a little Guza. I’ll bring the translator to talk to her.”
“Good enough.” Dhuja folded the necklace and dropped it into her pouch. “My grandsons bring me gifts from the slaughter, and the war leader of the Yakhat brings me another charge. I shouldn’t be surprised. Bring her to me.”
Keshlik fetched the woman and presented her to Dhuja. The midwife looked her over, pursing her lips and poking at the captive’s belly and breasts. “She looks healthy. I’ll bless her with the salt and take her to Tuulo. Don’t come to the circle until that’s done. After I have resealed the line of blessing, you can come speak to your wife.”
“I’ll be there when you’re ready.”
The anticipation of seeing Tuulo again warmed his belly and added a tint of mirth to his voice as he traded stories with the other Khaatat warriors. A glance back at the isolated yurt showed that both Dhuja and the woman of Prasa had disappeared inside. He slipped away from the circle of yurts and went to the line of burnt earth calling his wife’s name.
Tuulo came out from the yurt smiling, huffing, and heaving her belly around. She had gotten as round and red as a berry.
“Eighteen days since I last saw you,” Keshlik said. “How is it that you look almost ready to give birth already?”
She smiled at him and shook her head. “I’d give birth right now, if the baby would only come. I’m sick of it. My back hurts, my breasts feel like overfilled canteens, and Khou’s circle has gotten awfully small.”
“I’m so sorry. I’d carry the baby for you if I could.”
She laughed out loud. “That’d be a sight to see. Would you still go riding into the battle with a baby in your belly?”
“Ah, maybe not. But if I carried the baby, then you’d have to carry the spear.”
“Dhuja would slap us if she heard us talking this way. Or at least scold me for half a day.” She smirked at Keshlik and glanced slyly back at the yurt. “Were you victorious in Prasa?”
“Golgoyat himself fought among us. But nineteen spears were broken.”
“May their smoke rise to Golgoyat.” She closed her eyes and cupped her hand over her mouth, then opened it upward to offer her breath to the sky. “Were the
y Khaatat?”
“No, none of ours. A few of the Chalayit, a few of the Budhut, and some from several of the other tribes. All from Bhaalit’s group. The hardest fighting fell to them, as they had to assault the north wall while the rest of us attacked the undefended south. I’ve rewarded their clans with an extra quarter portion of the spoils. And the spoils of Prasa were rich, Tuulo.”
“Well, I saw that you brought me a slave. Did you think that I was lonely in the yurt with just my midwife?”
He laughed. “Well, I didn’t bring her for that. I wouldn’t slay her, since she’s under Khou’s protection.”
“And you couldn’t just leave her there?”
“And let the other men get her?”
Tuulo gave him a skeptical glare. “I can’t believe this is the first time you’ve found a pregnant woman on your raids. And you’ve never brought one home before.”
That question had rattled in the back of his mind ever since Juyut had mentioned it. He hesitated. “I’ve never had a wife inside Khou’s circle before. Perhaps I’m especially afraid to anger her now.”
“The leader of the Yakhat war bands fears a woman now?” She smirked.
“I know. Juyut said the same thing.”
“Really? That’s probably the first time that we’ve agreed on something. In any case, she’s already been cleansed and brought into the circle, so there’s no getting rid of her now. Though I have no idea what we’re supposed to do with her once she gives birth.”
“I’ll leave that to you and Dhuja. But what about you? Are you well? Is the baby well?”
“It kicks like a colt, which I hope means it’s well. Dhuja says that all of my signs are positive, and that I’ll bear before the new moon. And oh, I hope she’s right. My back hurts, I can’t sleep, and I can barely walk. I’m ready to have a baby and not just a belly.”