She pulled a few pieces of dried venison from her bag, flicked off bits of dirt, and gave half to Rasmus. They chewed as they walked, passing the water pouch back and forth between them. The pang in Malia’s belly soon eased although the throbbing in her leg slowly grew. She made sure Rasmus had his fill of food before she slung the bag, noticeably lighter, behind her.
“Do you live with the Jeguduns?” she asked.
“I live among them. They were kind enough to welcome me and shelter me.”
So she might have a place to live if the Jeguduns welcomed her too. “You said you weren’t a Jegudun sympathizer. What happened, then?”
The corner of his mouth rose, pulling at the scar on his cheek. “You mean, why was I exiled?”
Malia’s cheeks warmed. “I don’t mean to pry. If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to.”
He traced his scar. “I was no Jegudun sympathizer. In fact, I sought them out, hoping they would kill me. Imagine my surprise when they actually appeared to want to help me.”
She made an encouraging noise.
But he fell silent, with only the twittering of birds and the occasional rustle of a small animal through the brush marring the quiet. Malia began to think no further explanation was coming. Perhaps the memory was still too raw.
Then Rasmus said, “I went straight to the cliffs. I imagined finding a path that led out of the valley and taking it. Jeguduns would sweep down on me before I could leave. And if they let me,” he shrugged, “then I’d find something else to do the job. An Outsider, or maybe simply a fall off the top of the cliffs.”
A bitter taste filled Malia’s mouth. She started to regret wanting to hear more about Rasmus’s exile.
“I wasn’t expecting what I found when the woods ended. Fields of corn filled the open space between the trees and the base of the cliffs. And Jeguduns were working in them. I’m not sure how long I stood there watching. They seemed so … normal. Like us.
“Then a pair of them landed nearby with a fresh kill held between them—an elk. The sight and smell of blood reminded me why I was there. So I walked naked into their midst. I waited for them to fall on me and kill me as they had killed that elk.” His voice rasped.
Malia handed him the water pouch. He took a long drink, gave it back.
“Thank you,” he said. “When they noticed me, all they did was stop what they were doing and stare at me much the same way I’d just been standing there staring at them. When they didn’t move, I started shouting at them. I waved my arms over my head. Still they did nothing. So I ran at the nearest one. She simply rose in the air and landed a short distance away. I ran at another one. He did the same thing. And they just watched the whole time. I finally stopped running around, and that’s when I realized they weren’t looking at me like a confused animal would look at a human doing something crazy.”
“There was intelligence there.” Malia recalled very well the moment she’d seen its glimmer in Tuvin’s eyes.
“Yes,” Rasmus breathed. “It shocked me so … I ran into the woods, more terrified of them being intelligent creatures than of their teeth or claws.”
Silence fell between them again. The birds had quieted but not fallen completely silent as if they wished to listen in on the conversation. The pulsing in Malia’s thigh sharpened, and she realized she’d been so intent on Rasmus’s story that she had forgotten all about the wound for a while.
The woods thinned, and they came to a wide, grass-covered plain that sloped like a shallow bowl. Malia stopped and leaned against a young pine tree. “I need to rest for a while.” She eased to the ground.
Rasmus sat beside with his legs crossed. “Let me see your leg.”
She pulled the skirt over the wound. The redness around the edges had expanded a bit, but no deadly crimson fingers branched out. Malia hesitantly poked at the edge. The flesh beneath her fingers was boggy, and a thin line of clear liquid oozed from the edge of the wound. Her head went light at the pain as well as at the sight of her leg.
“Don’t do that,” Rasmus said. “How far away do you think this village is?”
Malia tried to find a familiar landmark among their surroundings, but she recognized nothing except for the very peak of the falls in the distance. A meager amount of water tumbled over the cliffs. When she’d been in this area last, the water had leapt over the cliffs as if joyful to fly, even for just a moment. Now the river was ill.
“I think,” she said, “that it’s not too much farther. We should find the main road again.”
Rasmus stood, shaded his eyes with one hand, and studied the open plain. “I can just see the road east of us.” He took in the plains. “I don’t like how open this is.”
“Should we go around, find someplace with more cover?”
He shook his head. “We’d end up going too far out of our way. You need your leg tended to today.”
Malia thought again of the boy with the creeping red fingers spreading along his arm. “Should I be worried?”
“No.” But Rasmus’s brows furrowed. “Not yet, anyways. I’d rather see you in the care of a village healer with all his resources at his disposal than with whatever I can come up with.”
Malia took a drink of water. It had turned tepid and tasted a bit of the leather pouch. “I’m ready.”
Rasmus helped her to her feet. They started across the open space. Cicadas droned lazily in the tall grass all around them. Malia tried to ignore the prickling between her shoulder blades. Nobody watched them, nobody followed them. Anyone coming this direction would be on the main road, and it stood empty far in the distance. If someone should happen onto the road, she and Rasmus could simply hide in the grass until they passed.
She wondered as she had before if Dalibor would be healthy enough to travel north with the other men from Selu. How could he? His injuries had appeared worse than this one on her leg, and she certainly didn’t think she could have made all that distance and be able to fight at the end. But he would have had immediate care for his injuries. She rolled her shoulders, fending off the sensation of being watched.
“Tell me more about the Jeguduns,” she said, hoping Rasmus’s story would take her mind off more immediate problems. “You said you ran into the woods when you realized their intelligence.”
Rasmus, a half stride behind her, nodded. “I spent that first night alone in the woods. I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about those Jeguduns and how different they were than what I’d imagined. I began to wonder if the Jegudun sympathizers were right all along. Maybe they weren’t the Taakwa’s enemy. Soon I forgot all about my original reason for seeking them out.
“The next morning, before the sun came up, I crept up to the edge of the woods. The crops were empty, the skies were empty. When the first light crept into the valley, bird song started. It was like nothing I’d heard before.” He frowned. “It was like one of the songs we sing when a boy returns as a man or when a baby is born. It held more meaning than a simple bird song.
“And then the Jeguduns came out of their homes. They live in the cliffs, and the openings were all over the rock face like those in a bee hive. So they stood on these ledges, and the singing grew louder. It came to a crescendo and ended. They stood there for a long time as the last of their song echoed. I could hardly believe something so beautiful had come from them.
“Then they all went about their business. Some went back inside, others flew away, and a few began tending the crops.”
They neared the halfway point crossing the plain. Malia glanced behind them. Nobody followed, but the tickling between her shoulder blades remained. She searched the shadows beneath the trees for signs of movement and found nothing unusual.
Rasmus followed her glance. “What is it?”
“I just can’t shake the feeling that somebody is back there watching us.”
“There’s nobody back there. I see nothing. And anybody spotting someone like me with a shorn head would raise a cry.”
“You�
��re right.” Malia faced forward. She knew nobody watched them, and yet the feeling wouldn’t leave. It must be her nerves getting the best of her. “What happened next?”
“I watched the ones in the corn field, wondering what to do. Should I walk out there? Should I say something? Would they understand me? Then one of them spotted me, or maybe sensed I was there. He stopped in the midst of pulling weeds and straightened up and looked right at me. We stared at one another for a while. My heart was pounding the whole time. I was frozen to the spot. I wondered what was going through his mind.
“Then he called up to the cliffs. So many Jeguduns popped out of their homes, and quite a few flew down to the fields. I started to rethink approaching them. But I couldn’t outrun that many Jeguduns. And part of me still didn’t want to. Where would I go? I was on my own. And I figured it was better to die a fairly quick death from them than to suffer for days alone in the woods.
“One of the females who flew down from the cliffs carried a bowl. She walked towards me like a person would approach a wounded animal.” He laughed. “In fact, I had the impression she was more scared of me than I was of her. She stopped a few paces away and set the bowl on the ground, then she hurried back. The aroma that came from it made my stomach growl.
“I picked up the bowl, keeping an eye on the Jeguduns the whole time. It was a thick stew made with corn and meat, probably the elk I’d seen them bring back the night before. There was no spoon, so I brought the bowl to my mouth and tasted it. Part of me wondered if they had poisoned it, but why poison food when they could kill me easily in other ways? It tasted wonderful, so I gulped it down and made a general mess of myself in the process.”
Malia thought back to the morning she’d brought food to Tuvin. There was something about feeding a person in need—or Jegudun—that helped build trust. She nodded for him to continue.
“By then most doubts I’d held about the Jeguduns’ intentions had disappeared. I was fascinated by their behavior and their intelligence. I wanted to know more about them, and above all, I wanted to know why I and so many others had been wrong about them. And that was the beginning of my friendship with them.”
They had passed the halfway mark and begun walking upslope. Despite the gentle incline of the rise, Malia struggled because of the ache in her thigh. She considered asking Rasmus for a short rest, but she didn’t want to remain in the open. She pushed on through the tall grass, cicadas leaping out of her way. A line of sweat trickled down her spine and a few beads broke out along her forehead. She wiped those away.
“Do you ever miss your village?” she asked. She missed Vedran already. She even missed her mother a little, much to her surprise. How could she spend the rest of her life without the comfort of a village surrounding her? “Are there any other Taakwa that live with the Jeguduns?” Maybe they could form a small village of their own near the cliffs.
“Sometimes I miss people from my village. The clan father who passed judgment on me last night … he’s my nephew. He slipped his dagger to me when you came running in and distracted the other men.”
“Oh.” She replayed the events in her mind. She’d suspected Rasmus of not hitting the clan father as hard as he could, and now she knew why.
“I just hope nobody saw him help me,” Rasmus said. “And the fire,” he shook his head. “I hope they were able to stop it before it reached the crops. The grass was dry, but I didn’t think it would spread so quickly.”
“You were scared for your life.”
“That’s no excuse. I might have doomed them to a hungry winter.” Bitterness crept into his voice.
“I’m sure they stopped it in time.” But Malia wasn’t so sure. The fire had swept along the dried grass like Tuvin’s Falls plummeted over the cliff.
Ahead, the cool shade of the woods beckoned. Malia could hardly wait to sit beneath one of the pine trees, take a long drink of water, and rest her aching leg.
Rasmus’s hand fell on her shoulder and pulled down. Her legs gave out beneath her. She tumbled to the ground, followed by Rasmus. Before she could ask him what he thought he was doing, yanking her down like that, he put a finger to his lips. Then he tapped his ear and pointed to the woods ahead.
Malia realized the cicadas had fallen silent. Her heart, already beating faster from the walk upslope, quickened. She closed her eyes, the better to hear whatever Rasmus wanted her to hear, and so she could calm her pounding pulse roaring in her ears.
The leaves and tall grasses rattled a little in the wind. A tiny creature scuttled through the grass nearby. It would run, pause, then run again. Nothing moved in the forest.
No, there, the slight scuffle of a foot against pine needles. Somebody wasn’t as good at hiding his footfalls as he thought. Somebody in the forest might have seen them. Malia swallowed the lump of fear in her throat. She opened her eyes.
Rasmus untied his necklace, the two Jegudun feathers hanging from it, and tucked it deep into her travel bag. Then he slowly, silently drew his dagger free. Malia reached for hers. Her hand was halfway there when a shadow fell over her. For a brief moment she thought Dalibor stood over her. She held back a scream. How had he found her?
Then she realized it was three men and two older, loose-haired boys who formed a circle around her and Rasmus. The men held daggers, and the boys each held a rope of trussed up turkeys. All wore close-fitting deerskin leggings and long tunics, leather belts about their waists to secure the tunic and hold hunting tools. The youngest boy, a trace of childhood softness about his cheeks, stared at Rasmus with wide eyes. The turkeys he held trembled slightly.
One of the men stepped forward and brandished his dagger. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
Chapter 14
Malia’s thoughts were as frozen as her body. She could think of nothing to say, no excuse to offer as to why she and Rasmus were here. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came out. She probably looked like a fish gulping useless air to these men.
The man nearest her had a round face, and he bore a resemblance to one of the other men and a boy. His body was well-muscled, an odd contrast to the boyishly round face. The other two were tall and thin and all angles. So, two families had gone hunting and stumbled upon more than just a rafter of turkeys.
“Who are you?” the man asked again, his gaze on Malia. When she didn’t answer, he said, “What are you doing with this exile? Are you helping him?”
Malia wanted to deny it, to tell them they were wrong. She wanted to talk their way out of this situation. But no words came to her. Her fingers dug into the cool dirt.
The man’s eyes traveled to her legs. His eyes widened. “What happened there?” The harshness left his voice.
She tugged her skirt over the arrow wound. Excuses sped through her mind, all discarded. She had to come up with something quick.
The man said, “What’s your name?”
Rasmus snatched her arm, startling her into a yelp. The three men flinched as well. The nearest one, tall and all angles, took a tiny step back.
“She’s mine,” Rasmus said, his voice lower and more gravelly than usual. “Found her. Caught her. Mine.” He jerked her hard enough that she sprawled part of the way across his lap.
What was he doing? He was antagonizing these men.
Yes, exactly, she answered herself. He was trying to make them believe she was his prisoner and not someone who had been helping an exile. He was stoking their fear of him. He was making them sympathize with her.
Then a cold blade pressed against the side of her neck. Malia’s eyes widened. She went perfectly still, not wanting to accidentally press into the dagger tip that Rasmus held to the pulsing vein in her neck. I have to trust him. But her heart hammered. She wouldn’t have to pretend to be afraid for these men.
“Back off,” Rasmus said, a growl in his voice.
The boyish-faced man nodded. He began to back away, one agonizingly slow step at a time. He slipped the dagger into its sheath, then held
his hands out as if placating an angry bear guarding her cub.
Rasmus wrapped an arm around Malia’s shoulders. He got to his feet, the movement jerky as he held her tight with one arm and used the other to hold the dagger. His hot breath came in fast puffs against her ear.
He backed away from the men, pulling Malia with him, the blade still pressed to her neck. The men stared, their eyes narrowed.
The boy to her left threw his line of turkeys at her and Rasmus. The birds hit Rasmus’s face and the side of Malia’s head. The dagger tip dug into her neck, puncturing skin. For a moment she thought she would die accidentally at Rasmus’s hand.
Then the men were on Rasmus, pulling him away from her. Malia slapped her hand to her neck. A thin trickle of warm blood flowed, but the cut was small.
The three men held Rasmus prone on the ground. He struggled against them to no avail. The two boys pulled out a couple of lengths of rope. One boy bound Rasmus’s arms behind him while the other hobbled his feet.
Malia bounced from foot to foot. Be careful, she wanted to say but couldn’t. Rasmus’s quick thinking had guaranteed she would be free of the men’s suspicions. As long as she was free, she had a chance to help him.
The boyish faced man approached Malia, his brow furrowed. “Are you hurt?”
She pulled her hand away from her neck. Blood had smeared on her palm, making it look much worse than it was. She grew woozy, not at the sight of her blood, but at wondering how she and Rasmus would get out of this mess. She swayed on her feet.
The man put his arm around her, steadying her. “There, there,” he said in a soothing voice. “The sight of blood does that to some people.” He led her to the forest and helped her sit in the shade of a pine tree, her back against its trunk. He pulled a water pouch from where it hung on his leather belt and offered it to her.
She took it and drank, then handed it back.
“I’m Stromlof,” he said.
Shards of History Page 12