by Hugh Cook
Unlike the dralkosh in Gendormargensis, Yen Olass had no child for Lord Alagrace to hold to ransom.
'I'm asking you to do this because I saved your life on the Yangrit Highway.’
'Saved my life!’
'You were a runaway slave, yet I spared you.’
'Tratz! I saved my life! In front of Khmar, I spoke for my life. Now you want me to save your life as well. That's not how it works. It's for you to save us, all of us, not for us to save you.’
'I'm not asking you to save me, I'm asking--’
'You want me to save Quenerain to stop Khmar skinning you alive. I want to save me! I want to live! I'm Yen Olass Ampadara, I have my own life, I'm me, I want to live. And Khmar will--’
'You must realize--’
'I must realize that I can't be there to see it, but that won't stop it happening. I hope he starts with your testicles.’
After a long and very distressing interview in Lord Alagrace's private sleeping tent -- Yen Olass painted such a vivid picture of Khmar pulling his toenails out and biting his testicles off that Alagrace began to wonder if she really was a dralkosh -- Yen Olass was taken back to the other prisoners.
And Lord Alagrace .. .
. . . did nothing.
Because it had already occurred to him that, since Chonjara had been able to secure a death sentence for Haveros, he might be able to do the same for Lord Alagrace, who was generally known to have had a long association with the oracle Yen Olass Ampadara.
The three prisoners were kept in a tent through the dying hours of the day and all through the night. They were not tied up, but there was no chance of escape: the tent was ringed with campfires and an ever-changing audience of men, talking, drinking, gambling. This time, there was no talk of rape, because now there was genuine fear mixed with the hatred; by the time the men had shared the true stories, the gossip and the rumours, there were few who believed the condemned women to be safe to touch.
For his part, Lord Alagrace became convinced that Yen Olass had used sorcery against him, because he woke in the night after enduring terrifying dreams of desexing and torture. He woke just in time to strangle a scream in his throat; for a few moments he was convinced that the Lord Emperor Khmar was actually in his tent.
Truth to tell, Yen Olass had done her very best to slip suggestions into his mind. She had succeeded in giving him nightmares, but had failed to compel him to action. When they had confronted each other, both had been very angry and, in their separate ways, very frightened; Lord Alagrace, all his energies mobilized for argument, had been a poor subject for skills of mind control which work best when the subject is relaxed, unsuspecting and concentrating on something else. Yen Olass, her skill rising briefly to genius, had planted suggestions which now conjured up the very shadow of the Lord Emperor Khmar in Lord Alagrace's tent. But Khmar was far, far away; Chonjara and the army were very close . ..
* * *
Morning came.
Signals came from the battlements: no food, running out of water, heavy casualities, our wounded are suffering.
Nothing could be done to help.
The mood of the army was grim, cold, hostile. The three condemned prisoners were hustled down to the Hollern River and pushed into the shallows just upstream of the bridge. Men lined both banks and the bridge itself. Those who had gambled for the privilege of casting the first stones chose their rocks.
Yen Olass Ampadara, her eyes red with crying, stood ankle-deep in the water. She looked around for Karahaj Nan Nulador, her only hope. She did not see him. And in any case, what could he have done? Nothing. She was wearing wool under her league rider's weather jacket and her mud-stained fur coat, but she was shivering. Why? Because she was tired, she was hungry -- how ridiculous to be hungry at a time like this -- and she was frightened.
They were really going to do it.
They were really going to throw stones at her and smash her face and smash her fingers and smash her and smash her till she fell down into the cold ugly water which was hungering into her boots, and they would carry on smashing her and smashing her till she was an ugly raggage of dead fur and naked bones gulleting away down the river to the cold claws of the sea.
She wanted someone to come and hold her and help her, but there was nobody. And Haveros and Quenerain both stood like statues, as cold and silent as stone. Both looked as if they were only waiting to die, they accepted it, how could that be?
The first man threw the first stone.
It hit Haveros on the side of the head. He grunted, and folded up. Dead? No. He steadied himself, managed to hold himself steady in a crouch, arse in the water, one hand thrusting down to seek for balance.
The second man threw the second stone.
It caught Quenerain a glancing blow on the side of the head. She grimaced slightly, turning her head to one side. Blood ran down her cheek. She was going to die like an aristocrat.
The third man threw the third stone.
It came flying through the air and hit Yen Olass on the shin. The pain was agonizing. She screamed. Snatching rock from water, she hurled her strength against them.
She screamed:
'You smegma-eating arsefuckers!’
She threw another rock. Saw a man go down. Screamed:
'Goatsucking shiteaters!’
Everywhere men were muscling forward, picking up rocks. A shower of stones came flying through the air. Yen Olass dived. Hit the water and struggled for the depths. She was out of luck. The river here was at its widest and shallowest, the water scarcely waist-deep. Men stormed into the water. Yen Olass swam into a thicket of legs, spears and bamboo poles. She was grabbed, punched, slapped and forced back into the shallows.
Then the men drew back, so everyone could have a good view.
Yen Olass sat in the water, crying, sobbing, covering her face with her hands. She cried with the hopeless misery of a hurt and hunted creature with no refuge. The Princess Quenerain, looking down on this bedraggled creature, permitted herself the faintest of smiles.
Then a rock took her in the chest.
Quenerain gasped, sinking to her knees in the water. With open eyes -- in the end, she had something of her father's undying courage -- she faced the men. And saw them waver. Like a reflection in water.
Water, yes.
Quenerain sketched a picture in the water with her finger. She drew it very carefully, yet when she looked, there was nothing to be seen. Why? She smoothed the surface of the water with her hands and tried again. No picture. Puzzled, she looked around for a stick. Perhaps with a stick she could draw a better picture.
'Mother,' said Haveros.
He sat down in the water with his back against hers. She was his mother. She had been missing for so long: he was glad to have found her. He closed his eyes. For some reason, he felt very tired.
Yen Olass Ampadara watched Haveros and the Princess Quenerain. Why were they sitting in the water like that, back to back? Why was Haveros nodding off? Why was Quenerain drawing pictures in the water? Because they were human, of course, and human beings were notoriously unstable and unreasonable creatures.
Everywhere Yen Olass looked, there was proof of this. As far as she could see, the ground was swarming with human creatures, some eating mud, some eating their own fingers, some humping each other in the muck, some grasping at invisible insects, some trying to fly.
Looking further afield, to Castle Vaunting, Yen Olass saw what appeared to be human beings jumping from the battlements into the flames of the moat. Or were they being thrown? It did not matter: it did not concern her. Why not? Because she was an otter. That was why.
Yes.
For a moment she had suspected that she might be human herself, so it was with a feeling of immense relief that she realized she was really an otter. She walked deeper into the water, lay down in the cool of the river, and let the water take her. Floating downstream on her back, she smiled at the sky, and kicked her feet, but not very hard, because her legs hurt if she
kicked hard.
Some distance downstream, Yen Olass pulled herself ashore and started looking for an otter-hole. When she found something suitable -- a concavity under some tree-roots -- she crawled into this shelter and huddled there in her fur.
For a while, Yen Olass lay in her otter-hole imagining the fish-smooth otter-king who would romance her by the riverbank, and the little little baby otters they would have together, and the excavations they would make to perfect their safe and secret otter-hole where nobody would find them not now and not ever, where nobody would ever find them or catch them or stone them to death.
Dreaming of the love her otter-king would teach her, Yen Olass fell asleep, and slept soundly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Yen Olass Ampadara woke in the early hours of night. She was cold, but the cold was not intolerable; wool, even when wet, tends to give warmth. She extracted herself from the hole she had been sleeping in, and scooped cold water from the river to appease the protest in her belly.
When she faced the river, the flow of the current was from left to right, meaning she was on the northern bank. Castle Vaunting, the ruins of Lorford and the Collosnon army were on the southern bank, somewhere upstream.
Yen Olass took off her boots and washed her feet and her foot bindings. Then she massaged her feet, wrung out the foot bindings, replaced them, then put on her boots again. Yen Olass had been around soldiers long enough to know that care of the feet is vital. When crutch and armpits are left unattended for a couple of weeks, and grow interesting growths of green fungus, that is unpleasant but not lethal; when feet go rotten, which can happen in a lot less than two weeks, an otherwise healthy person becomes a helpless casualty.
Low down in her gut, there was the beginning of a familiar and unwelcome cramping sensation. Mentally, she counted her calendar. Yes, her menses were due to begin. Swearing softly, Yen Olass hunted through the inner pockets of her weather jacket. Finding her box of volsh, she opened it, dipped her finger in the niddin-grease, and tasted it. Disgusting. She would have to starve for a little longer. In another pocket, she found her string of amber beads. Good for a bribe? No, there was no way for her to buy her way out of this mess. At last she found one of the pads she was looking for. It was soaking wet. She wrung it out: it would have to do.
Before padding herself, Yen Olass took off all her clothing, which meant taking off her boots again - if she had been under less strain, she would have organized herself better. She wrung out all her woollen clothing, knelt on her fur coat and did her best to force out any residual water, did the best she could with her weather jacket, then dressed again and put her boots back on. Already she felt warmer.
Now she considered the state of her body. The women of Monogail did not allow themselves to be disabled by their monthly flux; Yen Olass was more concerned with her bumps and bruises. She had been generously damaged, but all joints were in working order. Everything hurt, but she could still rely on her body to serve her faithfully. It was durable as a mule, strong, powerful, and well-fleshed to ward off starvation.
What now?
Madness had disabled the whole army. Yen Olass, knowing that she was not a dralkosh, knew the wizards in Castle Vaunting were to blame. Their power must be limited, because the spell no longer had effect -- Yen Olass no longer believed herself to be an otter.
Remembering what had happened to the soldiers, Yen Olass knew they would now be ashamed and demoralized. They would be sleeping or drinking, or planning desertion. Now was the best time to attack the camp.
Yen Olass thought attack was her best option. She knew exactly what she needed: Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. The Melski male would be her salvation. By now, she knew colonies of Melski lived to the north, in the Penvash Peninsula. Surely they would take her in and shelter her. If not, she would take the mountain pass leading west from Lake Armansis to Larbster Bay on the shores of the Penvash Channel. There was said to be a small community of humans at Larbster Bay, and ships put in there to land travellers, to seek shelter from bad weather or to take on water.
Yen Olass followed the riverbank till she saw the army's campfires. Only a few fires: most people must be asleep. Or dead. The sullen hellfire glow from the moat of Castle Vaunting suggested that a senile sun was about to rise in the south. Yen Olass was cautious now, facing danger. Yet she felt no fear: instead, she felt strong, bold and alert. Concentrating on shadow and sound, she no longer felt her injuries except when she bumped against a tree-stump or scraped against a bough.
She approached the bridge spanning the Hollern River. She halted, and waited. Watching. Listening. Looking for sentries. Listening for a cough, a snore, a whisper. The bridge appeared to be unguarded. Yen Olass remembered the voyage across the Pale, and how one of the soldiers (a scar-faced man with red whiskers, who had proclaimed that 'you have to kill a man to be a man') had lectured his squad on nightfighting, saying that, with even a trace of light, a silhouette against a skyline can betray movement at night to the skilled observer. ('So watch the curve of the hill and the tit at the top, and look for lice scuttling, boys.')
Crouching low, Yen Olass crawled to the bridge and began to slither across. Then a plank creaked. Under her? Behind her? She startled to her feet and sprinted, her boots hammering across the bridge. As she reached the other side, a man shouted at her from somewhere in the ruins of Lorford.
Yen Olass sprinted for a ruined wall, dropped down beside it, crawled along on hands and knees in its absolute shadow, then went to ground. And waited. The man shouted again. She heard the swift squiff-squiff-squiff of blood as her heart pumped a pulse near her ear.
Nobody came hunting for her. But, now that she was in occupied territory, she felt smaller and less certain.
Picking herself up from the ground, she advanced on the unsuspecting army, moving in fits and starts, staying low and pausing often to look around. And listen. Soon she was passing tents, woodpiles, empty carts. She smelt latrines, woodsmoke, damp ashes -- and food. Food! She drooled.
Yen Olass tried to estimate where the security section was. Sighting a camp fire which seemed to lie in the right direction, she set off toward it. When she drew near, she heard the men round the fire talking, but could not understand what they were saying. They were not talking in Ordhar, nor were they using Eparget. They had reverted to their own language, whatever that might be: this army had contingents from many regions of the empire.
All the guards from the security section seemed to have gathered round that fire. Doubtless they were talking murder or mutiny. Or desertion. Their voices were low, but angry. Going slowly so as not to make too much noise squelching through the mud, Yen Olass worked her way round to the back of the tents of the security section. Here, all was shadows and darkness.
Yen Olass eased a few tent pegs out of the mud, lifted the bottom of a tent and crawled inside. Into absolute darkness. She squatted there, waiting patiently for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. But after a while she concluded that there was no light at all to see by. Everything in the tent was very quiet. There was no sleep-murmur of dream voices, no sounds of bodies stirring in blankets, no snores, no creaking of joints, no whispering, no breathing. Yet the tent did not feel empty.
Yen Olass listened, screening out the noises of the outside world -- faint guttural voices, occasional animal noises from a horse or an ox, the muted thunder of the flames still blazing in the castle moat. She listened, and she heard . . . moisture falling drip by drop. Each drip gathering itself in the darkness, meditating, then falling to plop into a pool of moisture. A leak in the tent? But it was not raining.
Suddenly Yen Olass was terrified. She lifted the bottom of the tent -- and heard footsteps outside. Two men were walking through the mud. As they passed the tent, one said something to the other, and both laughed. Yen Olass crouched in the darkness. She looked over her shoulder, into the centre of the tent. But could see nothing but darkness within darkness.
When the two men were gone, Yen Olass slithered
out, not caring how much mud she collected in the process. The night air was cool and good. For a while she stayed there in the shadow of the tent, gathering her courage. Then she heard snoring from a nearby tent. Her first thought was:
-- So someone is alive.
Yen Olass stole through the night to the snoring tent, pulled out more tent pegs and slipped inside. Again she squatted down, waiting. This tent was full of the warmth of people and the little noises of people sleeping. But were they prisoners -- or soldiers?
'Hello, Yen Olass,' said a deep voice.
Yen Olass felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She knew that she had no occult powers of her own, but she was not prepared to disbelieve in the existence of occult powers -- and it was a powerful shock to hear someone name her in the blind darkness. Her bounding heart was a rabbit, chasing away over the hills with a wolf at its tail.
'I know it's you,' said the voice. 'I can smell you.' 'You smell too,' retorted Yen Olass, which was not true. There was a chuckle.