‘And now?’ Tecumet asked her.
‘Now we are all real.’ Galethea’s voice sank to a hushed whisper, and Hesprec could not tell if she was play-acting or not. ‘Or, if the Plague wins, none of us are, or ever were.’
Later, after the Pale Shadow emissary was found a tent where she could be watched, Hesprec commandeered one of her own. To Esumit, she pleaded exhaustion, which was not far from the truth. The ride from the Oldest Kingdom had been many days, the horses driven hard. Once they had found locals surrounding their fire – representatives of the strange tribes she had seen on her way south. They had never quite stated their intentions, but Hesprec had offered them wary hospitality, and they had fallen to swapping stories while Galethea looked on. Enough word of the Serpent had filtered down to them that any harm they had meant remained undone. Perhaps they would even send some spears north to the muster, for they had their tales of How We Came To This Land, just as everyone did.
But now she did not want to argue with her sister priest. Let the morning look to that. She needed to sit and take her thoughts out, one by one, and see which might have been veiled by the webs of the Pale Shadow.
Perhaps Therumit was also on her way – she could arrive tonight and tell a completely different story, and mire them all in arguing just when they needed to be most unified. And was that Galethea’s true purpose, to sow doubt and disruption?
There came a time when ten lifetimes of wisdom ran out, and she just had to guess.
She was brought out of her meditations by the sound of something scratching about the edge of her tent. Hesprec Stepped, letting her tongue taste the air as she hunted out its scent. To her surprise, she knew it well enough: not a friend, but perhaps a friend’s friend.
She returned to her human form to say, ‘Come in, Laughing Girl.’
The hyena that slunk through the tent flaps stared at her balefully, long enough that Hesprec wondered if she had made a mistake. Then Shyri Stepped, and the Serpent priest saw that she had indeed returned to Hyena’s shadow. Her face was painted with black and white, and she wore stiff linen armour studded with bronze. She looked like a full-grown warrior now, not Asman’s sometime follower. Her capricious mockery had been harnessed to the more malevolent humour of her god.
Nonetheless, Hesprec raised a smile for her, from that diminishing stock she had left these days. ‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ Shyri said, so softly that she might have feared listeners within the tent itself.
‘You are welcome nonetheless,’ Hesprec said, and sadly, because there had been a time nobody could forbid this Laughing Girl anything.
‘Effey, she’d be angry,’ Shyri muttered, as though trying to talk herself into leaving.
‘This is not Effey’s domain, whoever she is,’ Hesprec noted. ‘I make you my guest, for as long as you stay. What is it, Shyri? What help does the Hyena seek from the Serpent?’
That was a mistake; the girl’s eyes flashed angrily. ‘Hyena needs nothing from any of you!’ she spat. But something tugged at her and she went on, ‘But there is someone else. Maniye.’
Hesprec went cold. ‘Tell me.’
12
The River Lords – those like Asman, born within the jaws of Old Crocodile – were fierce soldiers, disciplined, well armed and well trained, but the Estuary tribes were many and diverse, each with their skills and cultures. The Estuary had a hundred strengths, if a wise commander could make use of them.
Tecuman wore heavy mail of crocodile hide studded with flint, and on his face was a scowling mask, an echo of the war-face that Tecumet was surely wearing even now. His servants had laid out a path of rushes for him, and he walked it between the many camps, looking at none of them but letting himself be seen. Beside Asman, the priest Matsur murmured the numbers each tribe had sent.
Such a host, Asman thought as they trod the camp’s winding ways. Not one nor the otber could have called so many spears, but only Tecuman and Tecumet combined. The whole Estuary has heard their voices.
There were the Hidden Men, crept out from their secluded groves. They went into battle in only their painted skins, which shifted and changed until they could hide right before your eyes. They nodded solemnly, eyes never still. Next was a camp of the Milk Tear, a cauldron roiling over their fire as they cooked up what might have been dinner or one of their deadly poisons. Beyond them, in loincloths and cloaks of sharkskin, were a band of Salt Eaters off the coast, their hair greased into jagged crests, whalebone clubs at their belts. They crouched over their own fire, smoking pipes of kelp and snorting white plumes from their nostrils. They hissed at Tecuman, which set Asman’s teeth on edge even though they meant it as an accolade.
The Shellbacks and Foot Cutters were both Turtle tribes, and never great friends, but they were set up within sight of each other and yet no Foot Cutter youth had tried to steal from his enemy or cut the straps of their bulky armour. They clattered spear on shield to welcome their prince, each camp trying to outdo the others. Past them, a band of Rain Watchers watched with mild exasperation, midway through mending their coats of reeds, better known for their wisdom than their warlike natures. But we will need wisdom.
Warlike and peace-loving, cunning and forthright, many or few, here were the spears of the Estuary, accepting Tecuman as their leader, as he had accepted Tecumet as his. There was a flurry of wings above them – for a moment he looked up, expecting the black of Maniye’s Crow. These were blue-grey and far broader, though – a heron large as a man descending at a prudent distance from Tecuman before Stepping to a long-limbed woman who knelt with her head bowed. The Wryneck people had been running messages between brother and sister, up and down the river, as well as other more dangerous tasks.
The Wryneck proffered a scroll, more word from Tecumet on how the muster down the Tsotec’s back was going. When Asman stepped forward to take it, she lifted her head. ‘There are scouts at the fortress,’ she said. ‘Weary from much flying, but they have grave news.’
Tecuman and Asman exchanged glances. The only scouts the prince had sent out had been heading north, to fly high over Where the Fords Meet and see what the Plague People had done with it. Herons did not fly swiftly but they could fly far when they needed to.
But they had left too recently to have gone to the fallen Horse stronghold and come back. Something was wrong.
Three of the Wryneck had gone out the day before. Only two were back, looking weary and shaken. They were an aloof and reclusive people by nature, their long-headed spears deadly when they were forced to fight. Their women were bolder than their men, and Asman remembered the scouts before they set off, like three tall sisters in reed armour tied with grey feathers.
Tecuman took the throne in his regalia, and Matsur bustled forward to greet them. The Wrynecks swapped glances before one stepped forward.
‘We did not go to the fortress of the Plague People, mighty prince,’ she said. ‘For this, forgive us.’
‘Yet you have found something worth bringing back, nonetheless,’ Matsur said on Tecuman’s behalf. ‘Lay it before the throne of Tsokawan.’
‘We followed the road north past Chumatla,’ she explained, naming the laketown at the Estuary’s edge that had grown fat on trade with the Horse. ‘We had thought to fly swift that day, fly high the next. But we found the enemy before we were ready for them.’ She shuddered. ‘We found them on the road.’
Asman felt the Champion become very still within him. It had been restless since he reached Tsokawan, knowing that others were fighting a war denied to it. Now here was word of that war, already on their doorstep.
‘We saw a warband of the Plague People travelling,’ the Wryneck said. ‘I counted ten hands of warriors, with monsters alongside them that bore their burdens and trailed their heels like dogs. We flew over their heads, and we felt the Fear of them touch us. Isiliqua did not stop flying,’ she explained, meaning her comrade who had not returned. ‘She let the Fear take her and did not know us.’
‘But you escap
ed them,’ Asman broke in, against custom. ‘You dodged their darts and arrows, and fought off their Fear.’
The Wryneck speaker just looked at him, biting back what she wanted to say for shame, but her fellow lifted her head and said, ‘They sent no darts. Even their Fear was not sent. It just was. We were strong in heart and it did not master us, but they took Isiliqua from us without even knowing she was their enemy. And we saw them fly, just as the Plainsfolk said. If they had taken wing after us I think we would not be speaking these words, or have words left in us to speak.’
Tecuman had murmured a prompt to Matsur, who asked, ‘How far were they?’
‘In two days at most they will be in Chumatla,’ the Wryneck reported. Everyone there knew that from Chumatla the Plague People would see the crown of Tsokawan.
* * *
Some lesser chief of the Dragon had tried to kill Gupmet while Venat was away. The lord of the Black Teeth, the most powerful man in the Dragon Isles, had survived it, not because he was stronger and faster, but because he had a hundred ears all over the islands. The challenger had not even reached the Whale Seat from which Gupmet ruled.
Venat had returned briefly to Shark Hilt, to the general dismay of Uzmet, whom he had left in charge in his absence. Renewing a life of petty tyranny was not his plan, though. He made a show of approving how Uzmet was running the place – not well but no worse than he himself would – and then had a woman go with a message to Gupmet. Time was short.
Last time he had met with Gupmet just like any powerful chief would – out in the open and both of them backed by warriors. This time he waited a day and then set off for Whale Seat on his own, taking a canoe through the maze of islands, slipping past the notice of rival Dragon chieftains. It was the end of the world, after all. It was a time to break traditions.
Gupmet was not a typical chief of the Dragon – that was what Venat was relying on. All too often, the outsider view of his people was no more than truth: that the most brutal and the strongest ruled, and only until a younger and more vital challenger arose. Gupmet had not been young for many years but none had usurped him. He was clever and managed his underlings well, setting them against each other. He understood that there was more to a ruler than blood and greed.
Still, the look on his face when Venat strode into his hall was worth the journey. The best part of a hundred Dragon raiders, their women and their scrum of children in that long house, and all of them stopped and silent, staring. If he had come to just call Gupmet out, open his throat and take the Whale Seat as his own, perhaps none of them would have stood in his way.
The old instinct tugged at him, the one that said, Who cares if you ruin tomorrow, just so you taste blood today? But Venat was not that man, either. Not any more. Often he wished he still was, but travel and foreign friends had soured him to the Dragon’s old song.
‘Let’s talk,’ he said, and Gupmet nodded. Soon after that, the hall was cleared save for a dozen warriors who were obviously considered more loyal than most, and the woman who served as adviser. Venat remembered her from last time – a little younger than Gupmet, but still with plenty of life written on her face. Women had no place at a Dragon war council – or any formal position within their rough structures of power. Except of course every man of worth had women at his fire, and those women talked to each other, and talked in the ears of the men they lay with. And so they had their own chiefs and their own influence, hidden in the Dragon’s shadow, and here was the hub of it, sitting at Gupmet’s shoulder and murmuring to him.
‘I’m here for a warband,’ Venat said straight off.
‘You had a warband,’ Gupmet noted. ‘Strange tales they told me, when they came back. Burning the houses of the River Lords, that’s one thing. I’d expect no less. But they say you let yourself be taken by them too, and you had the man who enslaved you as a guest at your fire.’
‘And these men who talk so much, they came back cut and empty-handed, no doubt?’
Gupmet smiled grudgingly. ‘They came back with Crocodile gold, and if they were paid it rather than took it from dead hands, gold is gold.’ The woman bent to his ear again. ‘They say you cut the head off a River Lord Champion. They tell a story at the fires about it – not the way it was, but the way they want it to be: that you killed the boy who made you a slave.’
‘His name is Asman. He’s a boy no longer.’ Naming Asman before the Whale Seat was giving a warrior’s honour to one of the soft River Lords, and one whom Venat should hold as his direst enemy. Except being Asman’s slave had not been the worst thing in his life. Except he had killed the Champion, Izel, to save Asman’s life.
Gupmet was watching him narrowly.
‘The Dragon are called to muster,’ Venat stated.
Gupmet made a flicking gesture in front of his face: a man waving away a fly that was of no great concern to him. ‘For this you want a warband? And will it be that while the River Lords go to shake spears at this enemy of theirs, you will set fires in their villages and take their treasures?’
‘Not this time. You have heard what is said of this war.’
‘The Plague People.’
Venat’s heart sank, for there was no belief in the chief’s voice. ‘No more than the truth.’
‘Children’s stories.’
‘The Horse have been driven from Where the Fords Meet.’
Another fly-swat; what were the Horse to the Dragon?
‘The warriors of the Plains have been broken. Everywhere the Plague Men go, they bring a fear that drives men’s souls mad and robs them of their minds,’ Venat pressed. ‘I have seen where their shadow has passed.’
Gupmet sighed. ‘None doubts you are still strong,’ as though Venat’s words were just smoke, already dispersing. ‘You are not young, but you have plenty of blood in your teeth. But you are too in love with the River Lords. Or with one of them.’
The spike of anger Venat felt was no less fierce because the words were true. He held himself very still, seeing Gupmet’s warriors tense and ready.
‘But this is foolishness,’ the chief went on. ‘You and I know there is more in this world than strength, but this is too far. Ask the Estuary men who died fighting River Lord battles. The Dragon has a destiny. It is not to sit here tearing at ourselves and wasting our strength against Old Crocodile’s back, but perhaps it is to wait until he shows his belly. And he is rolling over now.’
‘And the Plague People?’ Venat demanded.
But again there was the fly-swat. Gupmet did not believe in the Plague People, not as anything more than a cautionary tale dulled with over-use.
‘I honour you, Venat. Go back to Shark Hilt and live well. Or lead your own warriors in our vanguard, while I muster the rest of the Black Teeth to lay open the throat of the Tsotec. But the time has come to break free of the River Lord yoke, now and perhaps forever.’
* * *
Shyri knew she was in trouble soon after she left Hesprec’s tent. She thought she had slipped away from Effey’s band subtly enough, but there were hands on her within a few heartbeats of leaving the Serpent behind. Two Hyenas had her by the elbows without warning, but the hand that went to grip the nape of her neck missed its mark. Instantly she had Stepped, bloodying some fingers until she was free of them, but by then the entire pack had turned up to surround her.
Effey swaggered to the fore, looking down on her. ‘Now there you are,’ she said with exaggerated surprise. ‘It’s time we were on the move, little daughter.’
‘On the move where?’
Effey’s gesture took in all the bustle of the camp around them. ‘Thin pickings here. The Kasra has far too many knives keeping the peace. It’s all a pack can do to keep their bellies full.’ She started off between the tents, and Shyri found herself at the woman’s heels as always.
‘But where, though?’ She hated the whine in her voice, that little cringing tone that was an inferior talking to a superior.
‘Plenty of bones just lying around to the north. N
ow we’ve seen what foolishness the River Lords are up to, it’s time we went back to the Plains where we’re supposed to be.’
The warriors of a score of Plains tribes were gathering to the north, because they must either unite or be destroyed piecemeal. Messengers passed back and forth between them and Tecumet, and Shyri could only think, What if they’re not enough, what if none of it’s enough? The previous defeat of the Plains forces had been so complete that perhaps nothing could stop the Plague People going wherever they wished.
And she did not think Effey meant to join that muster anyway.
‘You’re going back to where the Plague has been,’ she divined.
Effey cackled. ‘Plenty got left behind when the Boar and the rest ran away. Plenty more piggies to hunt down, too, that were once proud warriors that looked down on the Laughing Men.’
‘But what about—’
Effey rounded on her suddenly. ‘You haven’t worked it out yet? None of them have, with their armies and their wars. This is no war for winning, little daughter, because the Plague People, they’re not even fighting a war. They’re just being, and that’s enough to turn aside all the knives in the world. But we don’t need to fight them. There aren’t so many of them; they can’t be everywhere. And they won’t care when a little line of hecklers goes past their gates. They won’t care when we go to the places the Lions abandoned and take what we want of their trophies and their food. We’re beneath their notice, little daughter. The only thing that would change that is if we were stupid enough to bring a war to them.’
But they’re destroying everything, Shyri thought, but that was no argument to sway Effey. Hers was the creed that most of the Laughing Men might mouth, but Effey truly believed. Here was the end of the world; it was the time of the Hyena. Hyena did not come to mend wounds, but to watch them fester and gnaw on the dead.
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 13