“We’ll have to brazen it, that’s all,” Kati said flatly. “Make sure your acting chops are ready tomorrow night, Mikal.”
“That’s the conclusion I came to, too,” Yarm sighed. “Let’s hope that the red and gold cloth rolls will be enough to keep those guys sweet.”
“All hail men who love bright cloth!” Jocan chanted, pumping a fist in the air. “All hail, bright, embroidered shirts!”
*****
They passed through the Chio village with as little trouble as they had had with the Dhho. The script was much the same, although the Chio Chief was a younger man than the Dhho Chief had been, and there was no tiny girl peeking at the bolt of cloth which Yarm passed over into the Chief’s hands. But the blond bowmen who stopped them before they reached the village could have been cousins to the Dhho pack, and the gleaming of the eyes that the sight of the cloth produced in the Chief and the pack members was familiar. The quartet made it through the rather more disorderly-looking village than the Dhho one had been, just as quickly, and had the runnerbeasts eat up the miles for a good hour before they stopped for their noon break.
While eating their meal they gave jocular thanks to various deities as well as Lady Luck, for having made it so far without any problems. And silently each one of them sent out little prayers, asking for help with the rest of this stage of the trip.
*****
In spite of the prayers, their luck ran out that evening.
The pack of young men that ambushed them on the outskirts of the Alif village at about suppertime, was about the double the size of the ones that had met them at the Dhho and the Chio villages. They were not armed with bows and arrows—or rather only two of them carried those weapons. The rest had nasty-looking sharp knives at their belts, unsheathed. They had been keeping vigil among the scrub trees which grew in profusion on both sides of the trail near the village, and neatly surrounded the little group of travellers before they had time to react. Moreover, moments after one pack member sporting a knife, had grasped the reins of Yarm’s runnerbeast—Yarm being in the lead—the four realized with sinking hearts that the young man was drunk. Drunk, as were all the other blond louts milling about them, three of these accosting the animals of Mikal, Kati and Jocan.
“Hey, I caught me a girl!” shouted the fair-haired, blue-eyed man who had his hands on Kati’s runnerbeast.
All the other blue eyes alighted on him—and Kati.
Mikal growled.
“Lay off my property!” he yelled. “Get your filthy hands off my woman this instant!”
The blond man loosened his hold on Kati’s runnerbeast, seemingly shocked into the act by Mikal’s shout. Kati drew her mount beside Mikal’s instantly, instinctively reaching for him for safety.
”Come on,” snarled the man who was holding Yarm’s mount, “he didn’t even touch her. Vik, grab her runnerbeast again, and don’t let go, whatever you do.”
Clearly the speaker was the pack leader.
Vik obeyed, grabbing hold of the reins that he had let go a moment ago. Kati wrinkled her nose at the heavy, alcoholic smell that wafted from him as he stood beside her animal; the runnerbeast turned its head in the other direction, too, no doubt to breathe cleaner air. It likely was not a very useful act; there were all the other pack-members milling around them, all of them just as fragrant. After a quick assessment, Kati decided that the one she had taken for the pack’s leader was the least drunk of the bunch—which was not saying much. That young man’s voice may have been steady whereas the shouts of the others were slurred, but his eyes were glassy like those of the others.
“Good Lord, what have we stumbled into?” Mikal murmured to Kati as the pack herded them along the trail.
Kati shook her head.
“A celebration of some sort,” she suggested in just as low a voice. “Not one that’s on any calendar that I know about.”
“If it had been possible for us to know about it, Yarm would have known, and we would have waited until tomorrow morning to ride through,” Mikal muttered. “I think that Lady Luck just deserted us for some reason.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Kati protested, but with a sinking heart.
Then she noticed one of the two bowmen staring at her, his face a mirror of naked lust, and she felt her stomach lurch with nausea. She grabbed hold of the handle in the front of the saddle which could be used by a rider to steady herself, and felt, even then, Mikal’s hand on her arm.
“Kati, you okay?” He sounded concerned.
She looked back up from the runnerbeast’s body to which she had turned her attention, and carefully avoiding the fair faces around her, raised her eyes to Mikal’s.
“I’ll live,” she whispered.
“Lovely bunch of beasts they are, aren’t they?” was all Mikal said but his tone of voice spoke volumes.
Kati drew in a few long breaths and told herself to buck up. It did not matter what those—things—were picturing themselves doing with her; fact was, they were not doing it. And they were not going to, she swore to herself. No matter what they imagined in their drunken dreams.
*****
“Well, well, well. Look who have arrived to celebrate with us,” said the man who was the Chief of the Alif Tribe.
The drunk young men had led the travellers’ runnerbeasts to stand before the Chief, where he sat behind a table which contained the remains of what must have been a feast. A large platter held a heaping of bones that had been gnawed clean of flesh, and smaller plates contained what looked like bread crumbs and the occasional slice of raw tuber. In front of the Chief was a large, battered, metal bowl half-filled with globular fruit and a mug of some frothy drink which may or may not have been some kind of beer. Beside the Chief, perched on an uncomfortable-looking stool, sat a slight, pale blond girl with sharp features and surprisingly intelligent eyes. She was clearly not drunk, although she was holding a mug which she occasionally would bring to her lips; however, she was not more than touching the liquid inside with her mouth.
The Chief was a man past middle age and his hair which must have had a copper sheen once had faded to something between blond and grey. He was still a powerful-looking man, however, heavy set and muscular; not a man to trifle with. Unlike his Tribesmen, he was pretty nearly sober, in spite of the mug sitting in front of him.
“We request that the Chief of the Alif Tribe will allow us to pass through this village in peace, and let us continue our journey into the mountains,” Yarm recited carefully. “We offer the payment of two bolts of cloth, one red and one gold-coloured, for passage across the Alif lands.”
“But no,” said the Chief, a broad grin breaking across his face. “You must stay the night with us and celebrate with us. Your coming has been foretold.”
“Excuse me?” If Yarm’s low voice could have squeaked, it would have. “Our coming has been foretold?”
“Yes.” The Chief’s laughter rumbled in his throat. “The Alif Seer has told us that tonight is the night that I, Komak, the Chief of the Alif Tribe, will impregnate my third wife, Lassa, here—“ he patted the knee of the pale girl beside him, “—with red-haired twins, a boy and a girl, the boy of which will be the Chief after me, a strong Chief, a good Chief and wise. And he has told us that this occasion will be marked by a visit by four strangers: one woman, one youth and two men. All four have travelled far to get here and have far yet to go, but one of the men and the woman have come farther than the others and have a very long distance of travel, yet, ahead of them. Don’t even try to tell me that this doesn’t describe you.”
Kati closed her eyes for a moment, and contacted the granda.
“Can you confirm what he’s saying?” she quickly subvocalized.
The granda diffused itself into the atmosphere using Kati’s PSI powers, and was back in almost no time.
“There’s an old man with some ESP capability in the small hut near the big tent,” it subvocalized. “He feels mentally sharp so I did not linger to make a study; he may
have caught my presence even as it is.”
Kati opened her eyes to catch Mikal watching her questioningly. She nodded slightly and caught his answering nod. She was certain that the Chief had not noted this exchange; he was entirely too pleased with himself to pay attention to trivialities. But his pale little third wife had caught it; Kati was also sure of that.
“What do you think, Mikal? Does that describe us?”
Yarm was playing for time, Kati guessed. Whether he had noticed the exchange between her and Mikal she did not know for sure. Perhaps he had, since he had thrown the ball into Mikal’s hands.
“I’m afraid it does.”
Mikal sounded completely sure of himself. He began to dismount from his runnerbeast, slowly, with apparent ease and confidence. Kati wondered what this was costing him, even as he elbowed his way through the men of the pack to stand in front of the Chief so that there was nothing but the table between them.
She realized that she was afraid for him. He was smaller than the pack members, not by much, but noticeably. He was beautiful, she thought, finely wrought even though muscular, whereas the blond men of this tribe in comparison looked like their bodies had been chiselled with an axe. His colouring, both of hair and of skin, was darker, a cross between gold and bronze, she thought. The way he carried himself as he pushed through the short distance to the table, struck her as almost regal.
The Chief’s little wife, the number three, was finding Mikal admirable, as well. She was licking her lips as she watched him; Kati thought that she was probably completely unaware of the gesture.
Mikal took a few moments to look at the Chief, and at his wife as well.
“Well, Chief Komak,” he said then, “if you want us to celebrate with you the auspicious occasion on which your children are to be conceived, perhaps you could call off the hounds surrounding us. At the same time you could maybe tell them to make sure to leave my wife alone; she is not accustomed to being looked upon as a piece of meat.”
“Heh, heh, heh, you are a courageous man, stranger from very far away. What shall I call you?”
The Chief appeared to be amused by Mikal but his eyes had turned into slits. “Mikal, be careful,” Kati pleaded silently.
“My name is Mikal,” Mikal answered him. “My wife is called Kati, and my colleagues are Yarm and Jocan. Are you going to call off your men?”
“If you agree that your wife and friends will dismount their animals and join the celebration,” Chief Komak replied.
Mikal turned to look up at the three who were still mounted. He nodded at them, his mouth a straight line.
“Jocan, you will look after the runnerbeasts and make sure that they and our saddlebags are safe.”
An older woman stepped out of the shadows inside the large hide-covered hut which stood behind the Chief and his third wife, even as Kati, Yarm and Jocan dismounted.
“Yaki,” the Chief called to the pack leader, “Give our honoured guests some room. Send your men to celebrate as they normally do, and call the women to bring some more tuber-beer.”
Yaki gave the pack a few curt commands and its members dispersed into the crowd of men and women who were sitting all around the travellers on the short grass. There were platters of bones here and there, a few bowls of the globular fruit and plenty of mugs of what Kati presumed to be what the Chief had called tuber-beer.
“With your leave, husband, I will show the boy where to put the animals and safely stow the guests’ possessions,” the older woman said to the Chief, bowing to him.
“Certainly, Marah, you are the one with all the graces,” the Chief replied, waving her off.
She came and helped Jocan collect the animals and led them and him towards the edge of the village round. Kati kept a part of her attention on where they went, determined to be able to scoot for the runnerbeasts if the need arose. The granda nudged her with a mental equivalent of a snort, and she had to concede it was right. The chances of her being able to run off to grab her runnerbeast and ride away were pretty remote.
Women came from somewhere with more chairs and mugs. They cleared off the remnants of food from the table and set four mugs in front of four chairs on the three unoccupied sides of the table. Mikal graciously stood away from it while this was done. His eyes found Kati’s and he signalled with a slight nod for her to take the chair closest to the Chief’s wife, and she did so as soon as the women’s work was done. Mikal took the chair next to her, leaving Yarm to sit beside him, and reserving the chair across from Kati for Jocan.
Kati had barely sat down when two more women arrived at the table, these carrying between them a large pail of liquid and a ladle. Mikal and Yarm rose to help them lift it onto the centre of the table, confusing them totally with this courtesy. As soon as they had the pail where they wanted it and the ladle set to float on top of the liquid in it, they hurried away, looking afraid.
“Help yourselves to some tuber-beer, Mikal and col-leeks,” encouraged the Chief in a hearty tone of voice.
Mikal picked up the ladle.
“Let us see how your tuber-beer tastes,” he said.
He filled up a mug for Kati first, then another for Yarm, and finally one for himself. The third wife watched this courtesy in mute admiration, while Chief Komak leaned back and glared his derision.
“We will have to ask Marah to sit with us, to show you that at least one of us also has some graces,” he commented in a slightly petulant tone.
“To our host, the Chief of the Alif Tribe, Komak,” Mikal proposed, lifting his mug up in the air.
“To our host, the Chief of the Alif Tribe, Komak,” repeated Yarm, lifting his mug up, too.
Kati decided not to push her luck. She said nothing, only raised her mug and nodded to the Chief, his young wife, and then to Mikal and Yarm. Mikal’s nod, approving her action and silence was so slight that she would have missed it, had she not been looking for it. They all drank, Kati following the third wife’s example and barely tasting the liquid.
That taste was all it took for her to decide that she was not going to be getting tipsy, never mind drunk, this evening. It was all she could do to keep her face from expressing her revulsion at the foul taste of the drink. It was plenty alcoholic, she decided; if this was what the blond pack that had accosted them had been drinking, it was not surprising that they were already well lit.
Yarm and Mikal apparently felt that they had to hold up male prestige by actually downing a swallow of the stuff each. If the situation had not been quite so tense, Kati would have had a laugh at their expense, watching their faces as sweat broke across their brows. Mikal recovered his equilibrium quickly—thanks to the fact that he also had a node behind his left ear, even if it was not a granda node. Kati remembered that he had told her that a node of any vintage could be of help in a situation like this; it could help to clear alcohol from the blood, assuming that one wanted to drink and not feel the effects. Yarm lay his mug on the table very carefully and Kati knew that he would not be depleting it much from then on.
“Hah! Good strong stuff, tuber-beer,” cried the Chief and took a good swig out of his mug.
The girl beside him watched this with unhappy eyes, and Kati did not envy her situation. How was Chief Komak going to manage the prophesied impregnation if he would be consuming generously of the tuber-beer?
The conversation lagged. Mikal tried gamely to engage the Chief in talk about hunting hares, about the year’s tuber crop, even about the pale-faced, blond, blue-eyed children who played games on the grass, among the seated adults, but received nothing but monosyllables and grunts in response. Chief Komak seemed to have decided that any need for him to stay sober was over, with the arrival of the awaited guests, and the little wife was looking more and more dejected with every sip of tuber-beer that he took. Kati guessed that this was a familiar pattern with this couple; she would get her hopes up that perhaps tonight conception might be possible, and then he would dash those hopes by drinking himself impotent. And this day the T
ribal Seer had upped the ante by claiming that the conception—of twins, no less—would happen! Kati felt sorry for the girl who was clearly intelligent enough to see where this train wreck was headed.
On an impulse she sent the granda to check out on the seer again. She knew when the granda made contact, glad that things around the table were desultory enough that no-one would note her momentary lapse of attention. She sensed, with the granda, the presence of an old man, lying on a pile of blankets in the small hut, a mug of herbal tea beside him.
“Aha,” he sent to her. “It is you, the woman. I rather thought you had talent. Don’t worry about the little wife—a fitting sobriquet for her—she will get her conception, thanks to you and your friends. But, things are going to get rough for you before then—don’t worry though, that man of yours will take very good care of you. Trust him.”
She was wholly back at the table again, completely puzzled. No time to work it out, though; Jocan and Marah had returned.
“Marah, Marah, get a mug for yourself, for tuber-beer.” The Chief was getting expansive as he grew more drunk. “I need you to do that thing you do, to do it with our guests, Marah. I need you to carry on a conversation.”
“Certainly, husband.”
Marah steered Jocan into the chair that had been left empty for him. She then turned towards the open door flap of the large hut behind the Chief and spoke to someone inside:
“Cinthi, bring me a chair and a mug; I will be conversing with our guests.”
“No, no Cinthi, no chair; just bring her a mug.” Chief Komak heaved himself out of his chair and moved away from the table, slightly unsteadily. “Marah will sit in my chair while conversing with our guests. I need to talk with Yaki.”
He lumbered off, cradling his tuber-beer mug against his chest. Marah received her mug from a sour-looking woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties; Kati wondered if she was the second wife. Hadn’t Yarm’s map-informant mentioned that the second wife had borne a girl-child to the Chief, the only child he had?
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