Though the winter lands were never warmer than on such a day as this, all the Lau wore light coats. I had expected this, but Rakasa rolled his eyes at me expressively. He and Bara carried short, powerful Ugaro bows for hunting and Ugaro swords slung from their backs. As he had said, Aras had not brought his scepter, but he carried the kind of long sword Lau prefer, straighter and longer than ours, slung behind his saddle. That is a weapon only used by Lau of a high rank. Geras and Suyet each carried a sword like that as well, though they did not know the weapons well and would have to practice with them as we traveled. Lau soldiers use spears from horseback, but on foot they stand in lines, shoulder to shoulder, and then their short swords and shields make them formidable. But we did not have enough men to fight that way.
As we came to the edge of the meadow and rode at last into the true forest, I signed to Rakasa and Bara to take the place in front. I knew they would watch for the great white tigers and the large bears and any other danger. Geras had the soldier’s habit of watchfulness as well, though less knowledge of the perils of the winter country. Suyet rode near Lalani, talking to her and making her laugh. Beside me, Aras rode quietly, without speaking. The breeze was fragrant with the scent of the fallen fir needles across which we rode. The morning was pleasant and entirely peaceful. Nothing could have been more different from the other time, when he and I had fled into the snow of the winter country.
He looked at me when I thought that. He was smiling. His expression was tranquil. It occurred to me now that this was one of the very few times I had ever seen him truly relax.
His smile deepened. He spoke quietly enough that his words would not carry to anyone else. “It’s not why I agreed to come; it was nowhere in my calculations. I’m not without a certain small responsibility even now; I realize that. But ...” he opened a hand and turned his face up to the sky. “I’ve been carrying that scepter for many years, until I ceased to notice its weight. Now, for a little while, that’s gone.”
“You should ask your king to take back his scepter sometimes,” I suggested.
“I really can’t. There’s always something urgent I need to deal with.” But after a little while more, watching an eagle drift in a slow circle through the clean and empty sky, he added, “Maybe I should.”
We rode in comfortable silence for a long time after that. The stride of a Lau horse is much greater than that of an Ugaro pony; Lau horses do not have the endurance of Ugaro ponies, especially in the cold, but they can cover far more distance in a hand of time. Very soon it seemed as though the winter country stretched out forever in every direction. I knew the land here, I knew how close behind the river still lay, but even to me it seemed the summer country already lay at a great distance.
When the Sun stood overhead, we paused in a wide meadow to let the horses graze—we had brought grain, but of course not enough for the whole journey. After slipping their bits, we turned the horses loose and sat down to eat some of the food we had brought—beef cooked with spices and rolled into soft, flat rounds of bread, and little cakes made with raisins and honey, and fresh fruit. None of this food would keep long, but it was good to have for a day or two. Lalani brought everything out of its pack—she knew exactly where it had been packed away—and laid it out for us. Then she began to step back. Among Lau, women do not eat in company with men. I stopped her with a touch on the back of her hand and gestured for her to sit down beside me.
“Sit and eat,” I told her. “Everyone will eat together, Aras even though he is Lord Gaur and you even though you are a woman. You are in the winter country now. Have I not explained how it is for my people? Because you prepared this food, it is yours to give to anyone. If a man displeases you, then you need not offer him anything. He may hunt for himself if he is hungry.”
Lalani laughed a little. I had told her this before, but plainly she had not thought of it for herself. She looked at the men to see what they thought. Aras had settled comfortably a little apart from the rest, but though he was not smiling, he was plainly amused. Suyet was grinning openly. Geras was frowning because he liked things to be orderly and proper, but he gave her a little nod and said, “I guess we’ll all have to learn Ugaro manners. Sit with us, Lalani.”
She turned, her eyes modestly lowered, to be very sure Aras did not object.
He said mildly, “Don’t look at me. Ryo has authority here.”
Geras and Suyet both stared at him, astonished, and then at me. I said drily, “You need not take that opinion too seriously. If Lord Aras considers some matter important, he will forget he said anything of that kind.” Aras started to protest, but I ignored him and shifted to taksu to explain to the other Ugaro, “Lau do not always respect their women as they should. I am explaining that all this food belongs to Lalani. They are surprised to hear it.”
Rakasa grinned. “If they do not respect women, they will be surprised by many things among Ugaro.”
“Fortunately we have many days to explain everything,” I said.
Lalani finally knelt on the grass beside me. She said in taksu, “Many days will not be enough for the surprise to wear away, but I will be pleased to hear all about Ugaro manners.” Rakasa and Suyet both laughed, and then looked at each other, smiling, ready to be friends.
Geras said, his tone resigned, “I see I’ve got no choice but to learn taksu as quick as I can. I suppose I’ll pick it up with all you youngsters to badger me about it.”
“Ryo’s too polite to teach you the rude words,” Suyet told him cheerfully. “But I’ve picked up one or two, so that’s all right, Troop Leader.”
“No troops here. Call me by my name, even in public.”
In public meant in the presence of their lord; no one else here mattered to them in that way. Suyet, ordinarily easy in his manner, nevertheless paused and looked at Geras, and then at Lord Aras.
“That does seem sensible,” Aras said in the same mild way. “In fact—”
“No,” Geras said.
Aras raised his eyebrows.
“Absolutely not, my lord,” Geras said, very firmly. “It’s one thing for Ryo, my lord, or for your talon commanders and people like that, but there’s no way. You can call us by name, that’s fine, but it’s not going the other way.”
A corner of Aras’ mouth tucked in. “Very well, Geras. I wouldn’t want to compel you to compromise your principles. Not that I think I could.”
“I’ll put—”
“Unnecessary. Also impractical, under the circumstances. If I consider a reprimand appropriate, unlikely as that may be, I’ll deliver one.”
Geras touched his hand to his heart in the Lau salute. Suyet, whose eyes had gone wide, relaxed and sat back, smiling again.
I said in taksu, “The soldiers would prefer that everyone remember that Aras Eren Samaura is lord of the county of Gaur. Aras prefers that everyone take a less formal manner, but one might wish to understand that the lord of a county is somewhat more important among the Lau than the lord of a tribe among Ugaro.”
“Yes,” Rakasa said promptly, speaking for both himself and Bara, as a warleader’s son should. He added to Aras, “I hope we have not given offense, lord, but please correct us if we should make any kind of mistake.”
Aras smiled at him, starting to answer. But then his mouth tightened and he looked up, across the meadow.
It was a big meadow, perhaps two bowshots across. Aras was looking north, past the gradual slope to the far side where the forest began again. I could not see or hear anything, but the horses began to pick up their heads. I stood up—everyone was standing up, reaching to touch the hilt of a sword or a knife. Rakasa strung his bow. Bara had strung his already. They moved to set their backs to one another.
“What is it?” I began to ask Aras, but before I had spoken the last word, an Ugaro warrior burst out of the forest on the far side of the meadow. He was running hard, his head down and his arms close to his body. A young man; he did not have the heft of a man in his prime.
“
Could a tiger be after him?” Suyet asked me. Without waiting for an answer, he drew breath to call out to the young man.
I nudged his shoulder with mine to stop him. “Be quiet,” I told all the Lau. To Rakasa, I said, “What tribe, do you think?”
Shrugging, Rakasa strung his bow. “Perhaps inKesaya,” he suggested. “That is a young man who is completely certain he does not want to speak to any inGara warrior.”
That could be so. The inKesaya were enemies, so a man of that tribe would not expect to be handled gently if he were caught trespassing. Still ... “Too far away,” I disagreed. “There are too many other tribes between the inKesaya and the inGara. Why would he have come so far?”
“Some young men are too ambitious to be wise, as we have perhaps made adequate comment upon recently, Bara, you do not need to say so again! Ryo, a successful raid against inGara would impress a young man’s friends.”
So. That did seem possible.
Aras said, in darau, “I think there are other men chasing him.”
I did not glance at him. I was watching the young man, judging his path and his pace. I said absently, “Of course there are. He is a young man from an enemy tribe, and inGara hunters have caught him trespassing on inGara land. They are close, but he still hopes to get away. There is no other reason he would be running so hard he has come halfway across this meadow without looking up and seeing us here.”
“Careless,” Bara commented. There was no sly humor in his voice now. He set an arrow to the string and looked at me. “I am the better bowman, Ryo.”
“He is,” Rakasa confirmed.
“Wait! Ryo—” began Lalani.
“In front of his feet,” I said.
Bara lifted the bow and released the arrow without seeming to pause to aim. The arrow snapped across the distance in less than a heartbeat and cut into the soil a hand’s width in front of the young man’s feet. He shied sideways, throwing his head up like a startled deer. Unlike a deer, he knew a warning when an arrow cut the grass by his foot. After that one startled leap, he stopped where he was, staggering as one will when one has been running hard for a long time. He braced his hands on his thighs, catching his breath and staring across the distance between us.
“He’ll come to us here,” Aras said, not quite a question. “I mean, he’ll come to you, Ryo.”
“Unless he is very stupid, yes,” I agreed. “He will see he has no choice now.”
Even as I said this, the young man began to make his way across the meadow toward us. I was not at all surprised to see five men come out of the forest behind him, two and then two more and then another. Bigger men, not taller, but older and stronger. The trespasser glanced over his shoulder and then lengthened his stride. If they had been pursuing him for a long time, no doubt he preferred to come to us rather than turn to face those warriors. Especially if he had been clever and set traps to slow them down. They would be very angry if any of them had been embarrassed or injured by such a trap.
“He would have gotten across the meadow, and he might have kept away from them for some time longer,” Rakasa said. “But I think they would have had him tonight.”
“Yes,” I agreed. Older men cannot run as fast as a young man, but this was inGara land, which they knew well and he did not. Some of those warriors would have pressed him hard while others, younger and faster, cut around by easier ways to get in front of him. I thought they would probably have caught him long before dawn.
The trespasser did not look back again, but came on straight toward us. I thought he might be a boy rather than a man: he was tall and his bones showed he would be big, but he did not carry the weight one expects of a young man past his fifteenth winter. If he were a boy, that would make everything easier.
The trespasser’s gaze flickered over the Lau without pausing and lingered on Rakasa and Bara for a breath. Then he focused his attention on me. He came close enough that if I had held a spear, I might have touched him with it. Then he dropped heavily to his knees and bowed to the ground. His hair was braided back. I could see it was not as long as it should have been: someone had already cut it for him, a year ago or maybe the year before that.
“I am Ryo inGara, son of Sinowa inGara, lord of the inGara,” I told him. He had to know this already. He might not have known my name, but he had to know a son of Sinowa inGara had been given to a Lau warleader as tuyo, and still lived. That was a tale that would have run all the way to the edges of the world by now. He would have to be very stupid not to guess what young Ugaro warrior would be here, so close to the summer country, in company with all these Lau. I asked him, “How many winters do you have? Who are your people?”
He straightened and knelt back on his heels, keeping his head lowered and his gaze on the earth between us. His voice came a little uneven because he was still breathing hard. “I have fourteen winters, warrior. I am inRasiko.”
So he was a boy. That would make everything easier. His people were a tribe I had not guessed. They were rivals, not enemies. That was also good. I said, keeping my voice stern, “You are far from the lands of your people. All the land here belongs to the inGara.”
“Yes,” he said. He did not look up, but held out his hands, palm up, in the gesture that asks for mercy. “Please,” he said. “I ask you to be generous, warrior.”
“Do you expect generosity of me, inRasiko?” He could not answer that, of course; neither yes nor no would do for a question of that kind. He wisely said nothing, only bowed a little lower. But I was glad to know I could be generous. There was no enmity between inRasiko and inGara. I could let the hunters have him; they would beat him and let him go and neither inGara nor inRasiko would need to take any notice of the incident.
“Ambitious, for an inRasiko boy to attempt to raid inGara,” Rakasa commented.
This was true. That tribe was not nearly as important as inGara. I could see Rakasa liked this boy’s ambition. Of course he would. Bara looked more thoughtful. He said, “Even more ambitious for a boy to try such a thing on his own.”
This was true as well. “Where are your companions?” I asked. “Are they also here, within inGara’s territory?”
The inRasiko boy said in a low voice, “I came alone, warrior.”
Bara raised his eyebrows, but I thought I knew what had happened. The fourteenth year is hard for a boy, harder still for a boy whose hair had been cut not so long ago, shaming him. Being young and stupid, this boy had decided he must perform some glorious and daring feat in order to impress everyone and regain his pride. He had decided he would make his way to our lands and raid us in some brave way that even we inGara would have to admire. Then he would go back and tell his people of his victory over the inGara and everyone would forget he had ever been ashamed. It had been a foolish thing to attempt, but if my hair had been cut when I had twelve or thirteen winters, I might have tried something like this. But he had made some mistake that put inGara warriors onto his trail and he had not known they were behind him until they were too close for him to get away.
Still, some things puzzled me. I asked him, “Why did you not ask for mercy from the warriors who discovered you? Did you think you could get away from them? They would follow you if you crossed into inSorako or inGeiro lands.”
He answered in a low voice, not looking up, “I hoped to cross the river, warrior, if I could come there, and go west through the summer country, and then north again once the lands of my people lay across the river.”
By this time I was looking at him in astonishment. “Do you speak darau?” I asked him. When he admitted he did not, I said, “That plan was completely stupid. There are many villages and farms and towns all along the river, and you would have had to go a long way. The Lau would have caught you. They would have assumed you came there to raid them and you could not have told them otherwise. Many Lau still have bitter feelings toward Ugaro, even now. They would have killed you, which would be bad, or they would have brought you to their lord and thrown you at his feet and the
n the lord would have had to decide what to do. That would have complicated everything between Lau and Ugaro in that whole region, especially as Lord Aras would not have been there to settle the matter properly. You would have done far better to accept a beating from these inGara warriors.”
“Yes,” he said humbly, bowing low.
By this time the hunters had come up. They were men I knew, who sometimes stayed in my mother’s camp and sometimes in other inGara camps. They were all respected warriors, older than I was. The oldest was the age of my brother Gayata, twenty and twelve winters. I said to him, “Tanoya, I think you have been to some trouble to punish this trespassing inRasiko boy.”
“He set traps,” Tanoya said grimly, looking with disdain at the young man. “The first embarrassed Lakosa and the second left Gyo with a bruise he will remember until the snows begin. But perhaps you may say that an inGara warrior who falls into a trap set by an inRasiko deserves to be embarrassed or bruised.”
“I would not say such a thing of a respected warrior,” I answered. “But I think that does not sound like a very serious offense.” I meant to go on to say that they should beat him for trespassing and let him go.
But another of the men, Hara, was looking with close attention at the young inRasiko who knelt between us. Hara said, “Did he say he was inRasiko? How many winters did he claim?” Stepping forward, he grabbed the boy’s hair, pulled his head back, and looked into his face. Then he let him go with a gesture of disgust. “He lied to you, Ryo. He is not a boy; he has at least sixteen winters. Nor is he inRasiko. His name is Tano inTasiyo. His father’s is Yaro inTasiyo. I saw them together at the Convocation two winters past; this young warrior was already a man then.”
There was a long silence. I had not expected anything like that; no one could have expected it. The young man, Tano inTasiyo, bowed to the ground and stayed there. He did not say anything. There was nothing he could say.
I did not know what to say either. Yaro inTasiyo’s was a name I knew; he was the warleader of the inTasiyo. The inTasiyo were not merely rivals. The bitterness between our peoples was so great that a complete ban had been laid down between our tribes; we did not raid each other or trade with each other. Our warriors never met except at the Convocation, where drawing knives is forbidden and enemies look away from one another. Even during the Convocation, our women would not speak to inTasiyo women. We had nothing to do with each other at all.
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