by J. S. Bangs
“You’re late,” Uya whispered. Then, louder, “You’ve missed them, Father Owl.”
The bird turned its head and looked at her. It adjusted its wings.
“Did you come to warn us of our deaths?” she said. “Too late. Or were you thinking of warning me before my baby was stillborn? Because you missed that, too. What kind of omen are you, if you only appear weeks after death has eaten its fill of us? Did you just come to remind me?”
The owl hooted again. Soundlessly he leapt from the totem, beating the air once, twice, and flew off to the north. He passed in front of the moon, and Uya lost him in the brightness. She watched the place where the bird had disappeared, but she saw no further sign of him. She sighed. Not even death’s owl would stop for her.
She stepped over the threshold into the ruins of the lodge. Burnt scraps of wood crunched under her feet, perfuming her steps with the smell of old woodsmoke. She walked up to the base of the ancestor totem and laid a reverent hand on it. A burnt, broken board, the remnants of the Eldest’s chair, rested against the lowest totem. It was a bear, placed in memory of an ancestor whose name she couldn’t even remember. Nei had known. Nei’s own totem was nine levels above it, a sea otter, still showing a little of its red and white paint between the scars of soot. Since Uya was now the Eldest, she would have to commission totems for Oire and herself, and place them atop the pole. Nei would uphold them in her death as she had in her life.
But it would never happen. Instead, the totems would fall, and all their names would be forgotten, and their memory would be snuffed out forever.
She rested her head against her ancestors’ totem and began to cry.
She cried for several minutes, her sobs beating against the bruises on her ribs. She fell to a knee, then cried out at the sudden pain in her bruised legs. Slowly, she lowered herself to the sooty ground and laid her head on her arms.
She had never been a girl who spoke to spirits. Saotse heard the Powers, and Nei dealt with the Hiksilipsi. But now, in the ashes of her home, she mustered up the first prayer of her own that she had ever spoken.
“Oarsa,” she said. “Why? Lord of the ocean, why did you forsake us? Did we anger you? Were our offerings insufficient? I’m sorry.” She sniffed and wiped her tears on her sleeve. “I don’t know why this has happened, but please… listen. Hear me now, if you’ve never heard me before. The Yakhat took my enna and took my child. All I want now is a chance to repay them in kind.”
A chilly wind from the sea stirred the ashes of the lodge. Uya’s resolve faltered, but she hardened herself and went on. “This is my oath: I swear that if you give me a chance, I will kill Tuulo’s child. It will not erase the pain they’ve dealt to me, but it will be enough.”
Then she added as an afterthought, “And Keshlik will kill me afterward. But to die is all I can hope for anyway.”
Her words echoed off the scorched wood of the ancestor pole and dissipated into the night. If the Powers had heard her, they gave no sign. But in the end, it didn’t matter. She had made her oath, and she would keep it.
She returned to the bridge. She was blackened with soot, now, and when the sentries saw her, they made signs over their eyes and looked away, clutching at fetishes on their necks. Perhaps they mistook her for a vengeful spirit. Perhaps they were right to do so. She walked through the city in silence, not even glancing aside at the few Yakhat she saw, until she paused outside the circle protecting the yurt. She heard another hoot.
In a pine above the yurt, the owl moved again. The same owl? She caught a glimpse of it in the branches. It took to the air as a flurry of gray feathers and silently passed over the yurt where Dhuja and Tuulo slept. Then it dove into the grasses beyond and was gone.
Chapter 21
Keshlik
“You let her go?” Keshlik raged. “What sort of calf-brained, rabbit-hearted sentries are you?”
“We believed she was a spirit,” the oldest of them said, cowering.
“A spirit! Khou’s tits! And what if she hadn’t come back?”
“Fortunately,” Bhaalit offered from over Keshlik’s shoulder, “she did come back. Maybe we should leave things at that.”
“Not just at that,” said Danyak, the speaker for the Chalayit. “I posted those sentries, and I brought them before you to report. If nothing else, I’ll have them shamed in front of the rest of the Chalayit. No one, spirit or otherwise, should be passing over that bridge before tomorrow.”
“Yes, do that.” Keshlik thrust his spear into the ground. He glowered at the sniveling, idiotic sentries. “And be glad that I don’t cut off your spear hands. Now go.”
Danyak saluted Keshlik and led the sentries away.
“Unbelievable,” Keshlik muttered.
“Even if she had run away,” Bhaalit said, “she couldn’t have gotten far. She’s alone, and she’s still limping. We would have found her.”
“We probably would have,” Keshlik said. “But that doesn’t mean I can coddle the Chalayit calves who were supposed to be watching the bridge.”
“No it doesn’t.” Bhaalit rose from his place atop a bale of hay and stretched his legs. “Still, if anyone else bothers you today, try to refrain from cutting off their spear hands. We do need to ride out in force tomorrow.”
“I know.” He groaned and spat. The whole day would be eaten up by securing provisions, counting spears, meeting with the speakers of the tribes, and answering every request the Yakhat brought to him. He did not relish it. And tonight he would see Tuulo for the last time before battle.
It was evening before he came to the circle of burnt earth. Tuulo was already outside, lying on her side on a bed of moss cut from the surrounding hummock. She lifted her head when she saw him come, but no smile brightened her face.
“Is it true our warriors have encountered a vast host?” she asked.
He sat on the ground across from her. “It’s true. The Tanoutut vanguard sent word. They met the forces from the south and stopped their march a day south of here.”
“So you’re going, then.” She pushed herself up to her elbows, grunting with the effort. “I should be used to it by now.”
“I’ll be close by. That’s why I moved you here.”
“Close by. Yes, well, it’s not as if you would be able to enter the circle anyway.”
“And the garrison that’s remaining will call for me when our son is born. I’ll be here to bless him. And I’ll have the witch’s eyes for you as a gift.”
“Ah, that.” Finally she did smile. “Good enough.”
“By the time you breach this circle, the campaign will be over. We’ll have taught the city-dwellers to fear us, and the autumn and the winter will be ours to enjoy.”
“I know. Tell me about something else, now. The battle to come. How many of them are there?”
“Many. More than there are of us. But they’re all on foot and move slowly.”
“As when we attacked Kourak that drove us from the Bans.”
“You remember that?”
“I was a girl at the time. Not even a cow-maiden. But I do remember something.”
“I fought there. A young warrior, my father’s lieutenant. Like Juyut.”
“Just as headstrong as that?”
He laughed. “No, no. It’s a good thing that you didn’t know me then, or you would never have let me into your yurt. I was a timid thing, borrowing courage from my father. If he hadn’t had the thunder of Golgoyat in him, I would never have had the guts to follow him into battle.”
“But you won.”
“Of course, we won. Not due to me, of course. I just did what my father told me to do, and when he opened his mouth and shouted Golgoyat’s thunder against the gates of the city… If he were still here, I wouldn’t be devising traps to destroy the Prasei witch.”
“I don’t remember that. We girls were kept too far fro
m the battle.” She closed her eyes. “But as for you, even though you lack the audible power of Golgoyat that your father had, you’ve led the Yakhat from victory to victory.”
“I suppose, if you call the last two skirmishes we’ve had ‘victory.’”
“I do. But—oh.”
The captured woman had emerged from the yurt and stared at the two of them. Her jaw sagged, and her mouth was a heavy, unmoving line like a river under a winter sky. Her gaze rested on Keshlik, carrying hatred like a knife grown dull with age. She proceeded with wounded, mincing steps to the opposite side of the circle.
An awkward silence fell over them until she was out of view. Finally Tuulo asked, “When do you pack out?”
“Tomorrow. Though I’ll be among the last to leave, as we’re counting the spears again as they cross the bridge, then I’ll ride at the rear to the site of the battle.”
She sighed. “I hope that’ll be long enough.”
They sat together as the evening ripened. The day was hot, with a dense, suffocating humidity that seemed to bleach the colors from the air. Flies buzzed at the sweat on their foreheads. Across the circle, the captive woman stirred and came around toward them. With a final, baleful glance at Keshlik and Tuulo she tucked back into the yurt.
“I don’t like that she’s here,” Keshlik said. “I took her out of the city to keep her safe, but that failed. There’s an evil doom on her.”
“A doom worse than what she’s already suffered?”
Keshlik grunted. He watched the yurt flap behind which the woman had disappeared.
“I’ll be happy if I just escape her fate,” Tuulo said. “So long as you have a chance to hold your son in your hands.”
“Thank you.” He sighed and kneaded the earth beneath his fingers. “It would be good to find a land to call our own again.”
“You mean one that we can share?” Tuulo gestured to the blessed earth between them.
“I mean all of the Yakhat. I’m getting tired, Tuulo, and I’d like to put down my spear at some point. It would be nice to find peace. So few of us even still remember it.”
Tuulo was quiet, tapping her fingers on top of her belly, with her eyes half-closed as if she were lost in reminiscence. “My earliest memory is of a wet, cold lean-to where my mother fed me and my brother gruel. Before Golgoyat came to your father, but after we were driven from the Bans. Would you call that a time of peace?”
“A kind of peace. But not the kind that I want. I meant the Bans, the old homes. The way the yellow sun glowed in the mist at dawn, and the lowing of the zebu on the hummocks.”
Tuulo shook her head. “I don’t remember that at all.”
“And that’s the problem. Most people younger than you don’t remember anything but the plains and the spear. How could I ever convince them to take up a life of peace?”
“Well, has the Sorrow of Khaat Ban been avenged?”
“How will I know when it has? What sign will appear to tell us?”
Tuulo shook her head. “When you see it, you will know, and you’ll be able to convey it to the Yakhat. Your father gave us back our courage. Maybe your lot will be to give us back our peace.”
They sat together, neither speaking nor touching, until the sun fell into the ocean.
The morning after Keshlik arrived at the camp, scouts of the Lougok tribe left at dawn to survey the Yivrian forces. At midmorning they returned with their report. The Yakhat were thirty hundreds in eleven tribes, strung across two hilltops at the narrow end of the broad, green valley. The Yivrian host was packed together at the far end of the valley in dense, orderly lines. The scouts estimated seventy to ninety hundreds in their number, outnumbering the Yakhat three to one.
Those weren’t the worst odds that Keshlik had ever faced.
And there was good news. Thanks to the short stride of the Yivrian ponies, the scouts’ mares easily outran the sallies of the defenders that saw them. The Yivriindi were armed with long, heavy bronze spears for the most part, interspersed with men bearing slings and bows. Based on what the scouts had seen, the men were none too accurate with them. Their only advantage was their numbers. And the witch, if she was hiding among them.
Juyut was on his right and Bhaalit on his left. Behind them were two score mounted warriors, their spears upright, with their blades glittering in the sunlight.
A delegation from the Yivrian forces was approaching with a force of similar size. In their center was a chariot roofed in white fabric, holding a tall, elderly man and pulled by a pair of sturdy ponies.
“Remember the face of the man in the chariot,” Keshlik said to Juyut and Bhaalit. “If we kill him, we can split his forces.”
Bhaalit just grunted. Juyut shifted in his saddle. He was still bruised, and he winced every time his spear found its mark in the warriors’ games. But he could ride, and he insisted on going out to the battle. If it were anyone else, Keshlik wouldn’t have let him. But it was Juyut. He was the best warrior of the Khaatat, perhaps the best of all of the Yakhat. Even wounded, he was a force on the battlefield, and the young warriors of his generation looked up to him as if he were their commander. Keshlik couldn’t leave him back.
A messenger preceded the main body of the Yivrian party, shouting in Guza: “The king of the Yivriindi comes in peace! He seeks parlay according to the agreed terms! Accept him in peace!”
“In peace, in peace,” Juyut muttered. “We heard you the first time.”
The Yivrian envoy stopped a hundred feet from where the Yakhat were waiting. As had been agreed through the messengers sent between the armies last night, Keshlik trotted into the middle of the open space between them, accompanied only by Juyut and Bhaalit.
“Have you come unarmed?” the messenger asked.
“We have no spears and no bows, as agreed,” Keshlik said.
The block of spears surrounding the tented chariot split. A tall, white-haired figure began to approach.
The herald closed his eyes. “Behold, the High King of Kendilar! Whose ancestors are written on a pillar of stone, whose ancestry is founded upon Vanasenar, beloved of Lunelori, who carries the star-bright sword…”
The introduction went on for some time as the kenda approached. Keshlik suppressed the urge to tell the herald to stop piling on the titles, as if the battle would be won by the length of the kenda’s names. The herald bowed and scurried away as soon as the white-haired man reached them.
Keshlik looked down at the kenda from atop his mare. The man was tall, thin, and uncowed, looking up at Keshlik with haughty confidence. He was dressed in light blue cloth edged with silver embroidery, which was matched by a set of fine silver chains draped around his neck. The circlet on his brow was pleated with feathers, forming a crown of egret white and jay blue atop his head. The sword that the herald had mentioned was clasped at his side, a blade of shining steel, the etchings on its blade glittering in the sunlight.
But none of these things would make any difference in the battle. So Keshlik raised his voice and said, “Are you the kenda that this herald has been prattling about? Did you expect me to fall to the ground trembling at the mention of your ancestors? I’ve never heard of any of them. If you wish to speak to me, speak to me like a man.”
The kenda crossed his arms and examined Keshlik with cool indifference. “Should I answer you as if you are a man or a demon? Are you not the murderer who ravaged the city of Prasa and slew my ally, the Prasada?”
“I am. Did you come to hear my exploits? They’re more impressive than the list of your ancestors.”
The kenda scowled. “Damn your exploits. I offer you a chance to surrender before you’re crushed.”
“We fight with Golgoyat of the thundercloud. The Yakhat will never surrender.”
“Your Golgoyat is as meaningless to me as my ancestors are to you. But if you’re not a fool, you’ll listen to my offer. We
have you massively outnumbered.”
“The warriors of the Yakhat make yours look like children. Why should we fear your legion of rabbits?”
“We also have a woman who is Kept of Sorrow.”
Keshlik’s heart skipped. The phrase “Kept of Sorrow” was meaningless to him, but it meant the witch was here. He had guarded the faint hope that she wouldn’t come to this battle, but he buried his fear. “Now why should we fear a woman? Is her spear bigger than yours?”
Juyut and Bhaalit chuckled.
The kenda cut them off. “You’ve met her before. The ground itself obeys her and revolts the insults of your warriors’ hooves.”
“So her spear is bigger than yours,” Juyut said in Yakhat. Bhaalit laughed.
The kenda raked Juyut with his sharpened gaze. “Does your friend have something to say to me, or is he going to continue whispering like an old woman?”
“You just told me to be afraid of your old woman,” Keshlik said, “so maybe I’ll allow that comparison. We have faced your witch before.”
“Then you know you ought to be afraid.”
“We’re both alive. Does she think she’s going to get us on her third try? Now you should ask her if she remembers the tip of the knife I got into her.”
“You will never see her. The Kept is defended by the whole of the army now. So unless you think you can tear through the entirety of my forces without the ground swallowing you up, you should hear my offer.”
“Tell me, then,” Keshlik said.
“I am prepared to suffer your presence in my realm on three conditions. First, you withdraw from the field of battle and all lands south of the River Prasa. Second, withdraw from the city of Prasa itself and all of its environs, including all settlements of the Prasei on the north bank. Finally, allow the survivors of those settlements to return and live peacefully in perpetuity. Never again will you come out in force against the Prasei or the Yivriindi, or be found south of the river.”
Keshlik snorted. “Golgoyat forsake us if we accept those terms.”