Tarashana

by Rachel Neumeier

  There had been hail. The pieces had been as big as my thumbnail. The ground was covered with them, as with snow, but the ice was melting already, leaving flattened grasses and damp soil that was not really wet because the water had not had time to soak into the earth. I met Rakasa’s eyes when I saw the hail. His mouth crooked. I thought we were both deciding not to mention to the Lau that sometimes the hail may be much bigger than that. That kind of hail, hurled by the force of the shiral winds, will break even Ugaro bones. That is why, if we are caught without shelter, we cover our heads with something better than only our arms, if we can.

  We had lost some of the saddlebags and some of the packs, and one horse who had broken her hobbles and fled. She had not run far. She had put her foot in a hole hardly two bowshots away, and gone down so violently that the bone had not merely broken, but splintered. This was the dark bay mare that Rakasa had been riding. He put his hand over her muzzle and stroked her face and whispered to her, gently bending her head to the side to give Geras the best angle to cut the large arteries in her throat. Rakasa helped her down as the strength left her and stroked her face again, then walked back to join the rest of us. “It could have happened much farther away,” he said. “Then she would have been left alone to die like that. Wolves would have taken her, if she were lucky.”

  “Yes,” I said. It was true.

  “Your horses are too trusting,” he told Aras. “Even if she were hurt, an Ugaro pony would not stand like that for a man to cut her throat.”

  “Yes,” Aras said gently. “I am sorry, Rakasa.”

  Rakasa shrugged and walked away to see to the other horses. They would need to be saddled again, and the rest of the packs sorted out so that we knew what we still had and what we had lost. Perhaps someone far away would be surprised to find a Lau blanket or bowl where the winds finally dropped it.

  Aras asked me, “Can your singers call that down as they can call down the fengol?”

  I said patiently, “A singer might ask. But the gods bring down their whip as they choose.” I had seen before that the Lau, even Aras, thought that the request of a singer was like working a cantrip, though it was not at all the same.

  “It would be a dangerous request,” Bara added, coming up to us. “Men and beasts may easily suffer injury or death when the shiral comes down. We have reason to be grateful that the gods did not strike so hard a blow today.”

  “I see.” Aras looked thoughtful. He was probably thinking of the kind of situation where a singer might ask for the gods to bring down their whip.

  I said, “Tonight, I will tell you a tale of a time when that happened. But for now, we should ride. Moving will probably help the horses settle.”

  We rode slowly for the rest of that day, giving the horses time to recover and forget they had been upset. We saw nothing more alarming than a fox, which I pointed out to Suyet and Lalani. The steppe fox is paler in color and longer in the leg than the fox of the forest.

  Suyet looked at the fox with interest—he was always interested in everything—and said, “A lot like the jackals of the south, but not quite the same.”

  I nodded. “There is another fox we may see in the high north, different again, small, with short legs and small ears. In the warm season, it is gray, but the falling snows turn its coat white. You may have seen furs.”

  Lalani, riding near us, gave me a skeptical look. “White fox, yes, Ryo, but ... the animals actually change color?”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Weasels do that too. Ptarmigan. Rabbits. Many little beasts and birds sit in the first snow and turn whiter with every flake that falls.”

  “If you say this happens, of course it must be true,” Lalani said, which is what Lau women say when they do not believe something a man says. Usually the woman makes some effort to sound sincere. Lalani did not trouble to make that effort.

  I grinned at her. “If you are still in the high north when the cold season comes, you will see it is so.”

  “I could almost wish to see this,” she said, a little wistfully.

  “I would like to see it,” Suyet agreed. “But I suppose we’d better hope we’re not in the high north by the time the season turns.” We had been speaking sometimes in taksu and sometimes in darau, but now he switched back to taksu and said more formally, “Ryo, there is something I wonder. I do not think it is impolite to ask.”

  Geras, riding near us, said, “I don’t suppose you’d care to talk in darau.”

  “You should learn better taksu,” I told him, and said to Suyet, in taksu, “Ask.” To Tano, riding a little way behind me, I added, “Explain to Geras anything he does not understand.” That would improve his darau and Geras’ taksu both at once.

  Suyet said cheerfully, “I’ll use little tiny words, Troop Leader. Wouldn’t want to make it too hard for you.”

  Geras aimed a casual cuff at him and said in bad taksu, with some darau words mixed in, “I am very old for you young men to speak to me with disrespect.”

  “I apologize, Troop Leader. I will take your blow for it if you wish,” Suyet said instantly, in faultless taksu. He had practiced that phrase.

  Geras rolled his eyes. “You’ll get dirt between your teeth tonight when we spar, you know that, right?”

  “I probably will,” Suyet said, not as though the prospect troubled him. He switched back to taksu and said to me, in small words, “The words fengol and shiral are not the same as other taksu words. They are like tal, the word that means of the gods. Or the word for people, ila. Few other taksu words have that sound. Is there a different language Ugaro speak, or used to speak?”

  That was an interesting question. I had no idea. I thought of other words and their sounds and said finally, “I think for that you should ask a poet, Suyet. There is a word for luck, donal, that is like that too, and a word for death, kala. A poet might know a tale that explains something about that.” Behind me, I could hear Tano struggling to explain some of what I had said. His darau was not good yet, but I noticed that he did not flinch when Geras corrected his choice of words or his manner of speaking.

  We camped that evening by one of the shallow ponds left by the shiral. We were short a tent now, having lost one to the storm. The Lau, less comfortable sleeping beneath the sky, sorted this out as they saw fit. Not entirely to my surprise, Suyet went to Lalani’s tent, giving Aras more space in the bigger tent, with only Geras to share that one. I laid my blanket by the fire with everyone else.

  “Is Suyet her husband?” Bara asked me. “I had not realized.”

  I said, “Lau customs are not exactly like Ugaro customs.”

  After a short silence, Rakasa said, “I am certain that Ugaro need not express any opinion regarding Lau customs, but now we are all curious, Ryo.”

  By now we had traveled together long enough that I thought I could risk explaining, especially as Rakasa had declared so firmly that no one would express offense.

  “Remarkable ... though of course I have no opinion,” Bara said, when I had explained dowries, and their importance, and talon wives, and how the failure of a dowry might bring a woman into an army in that way. “Or perhaps one opinion, if you will permit me to say so. When we come to your mother’s camp, perhaps Lalani should speak to your mother before she raises up her own tent.”

  “No one could disagree with that opinion,” I agreed.

  The night was calm, as generally happens after the shiral passes, and we delayed in that place long into the next morning to give the horses more time to rest and graze. As that would take some time, I took Tano away from the rest to spar, but I asked Geras to come too. Tano did not like that, though he did not say so. I pretended not to notice. I asked Geras to sit and watch, and then I made Tano spar with me. He did very badly, even worse than the other time, which I had expected. When I gave him an opening, he stepped back without even noticing he did it.

  “Stop,” I said. He stopped in surprise, lowering his sword—another bad habit. I said nothing of that. I said, “W
atch me,” and then went again through exactly the same moves I had just used in sparring, this time against no opponent at all, only the empty air. I gave the same opening I had before and stopped, and looked at Tano.

  “Yes,” he said. He was embarrassed and ashamed and trying not to show that.

  “Again,” I said. “Exactly the same. This time take that opening.”

  This time he managed it. He was slow, but he stepped forward instead of back, and he took the opening I gave him.

  “Again. Much harder.”

  That time it was better. I said, “If your blade had been sharp, that blow would have cut me badly. Your sword might have turned against my ribs, so I might have killed you anyway. Lower would be better. Again.” This time I did not let him stop, but pressed him carefully. I gave him another opening, a different kind, and he stepped back again.

  This time he knew what he had done. The color came up hot into his face and he threw down his sword.

  “No,” I told him. “Pick it up. Anger is useful to a warrior, but that kind of temper will make a warrior careless and stupid.” My brother had told me that more than once before I had learned the lesson. He had had to beat me for that fault to make me listen to him.

  I would not have to beat Tano. He listened to me better than I had listened to Garoyo. He was breathing hard from anger and shame, but he knelt and bowed to show he accepted the correction. Then he picked up his sword and stood up again, put on a polite, attentive expression and looked at me, waiting.

  Geras cleared his throat. “Got an idea,” he said in darau. He picked up his own practice sword, still sheathed, and came to stand behind Tano. “Try it now,” he told me.

  “So,” I acknowledged, and nodded to Tano to begin.

  At first it was the same again. He was clumsy and slow, and when I gave him an opening he should take, he began to step back. Geras held out his sheathed sword and tapped him on the back, and he stumbled. I waited for him to recover. “Go forward,” Geras said to him in slow taksu. “Forward, not back. Close, not far.” To me he said, “Go on. He needs to learn better, right now, right this minute. He’ll do better as soon as he sees he can do better.”

  Every time Tano started to step back when he should not, Geras rapped him lightly across the back with his sheathed sword. Twice Geras told me to stop and showed him something: a better way to stop me from getting through his guard to cut his forearm, and then again, a way to push my sword aside with the hilt of his in order to open the way for a knife. Tano stopped thinking only of how badly he fought and began to listen to Geras. It was plainly much, much easier for him to learn from Geras than from me.

  After a short time, I gave Tano an opening, a chance to hit my arm. Geras tapped his back sharply almost before I did it, and Tano lunged forward and cracked his practice sword hard against my arm, almost hard enough to make me drop my sword. He jerked back at once, startled, or he might have hit me a second time. Geras flicked his sword against Tano’s back and he jumped forward again, and this time he nearly made his own opening. I caught his sword with mine and closed my hand over his to stop him in that moment, so he would have stopped after doing something well. That was something Garoyo had taught me when I was very young. I had not remembered that until this moment.

  “Good,” I told Tano, letting him go once I was certain he knew the sparring was finished. “I would have no hand now if the blade had been sharp. This was very much better.” Tano had gone pale this time, not red. I pretended not to notice. I said, “We will stop there. We will all think about what worked best today. Tomorrow we will try this again, or something else, as seems best.”

  “I show better how hold place,” Geras said to Tano in terrible taksu. He rolled his eyes at himself and added, “Tell the youngster I’ll work with him on that tonight, drill him against Suyet until he forgets all about backing up no matter who he’s facing.”

  I translated this, and Tano bowed his head and said, very quietly, “I thank you for your kindness.”

  We began to walk back to rejoin the others. Geras said to me in rapid darau, “Someone’s done a real solid job smashing this youngster right down into the dirt, but I’m thinking it won’t take too long to get him moving forward instead of back.”

  I thought Tano probably understood some of what Geras said, but I thought this was good, so I only responded, “You think so?”

  “I figured you were worried about that. No, no need to fret, Ryo. Boys as badly taught as this always improve. They can hardly get worse.”

  “Yes,” I said. “He is not a boy. He has sixteen winters.” I hesitated. Then I asked, “You have seen this before?” From his manner, I thought he had—and I thought Tano should know that. He was walking a little distance apart, his gaze lowered, but I knew he was listening.

  “Now and then, sure,” said Geras. “Boys always need to learn to hold the line, and sometimes they’ve been taught to back up instead. Some men shouldn’t be let pick up a training sword; they’ve got no notion what to do with it. I’ve worked with older boys who started off worse. Not real often, I’ll say that, but you saw how much better he was doing in just one session. He’s not that bad. He sees when he ought to attack, he even sees how, he just needs to learn to do it, even when he’s facing someone who matters to him. He’ll get there.”

  I said, “I thank you for your wise advice, Geras.” Then I shifted back to taksu and said, “I thank you for your advice. Any young man would do well to listen to an older man who understands such matters.”

  Tano said nothing. But he bowed his head in agreement.

  But neither Geras nor I had time to work with Tano again for some days. That evening, a little before we might have begun to make a camp, we saw something I had been waiting to see: a great number of ponies and cattle, uncountable numbers, and traveling slowly among the animals, many wagons. We had finally encountered one of the great inGara herds.

  -9-

  They had seen us too, and a dozen of the boys and some of the warriors came to see who we were. I rode out to meet them. I nudged my mare into a full run, drew a wide circle across the steppe as fast as she could gallop, and finally leaned back to draw her down to a canter, though she danced and tossed her head, excited by the speed and perfectly aware we had been showing off. She wanted to run again, but I coaxed her to turn into the midst of the Ugaro riders, brought her to a halt and called, “Gayata! Would you wish to race that fine mare of yours against mine? This time you might not have everything your own way!”

  “Ryo!” he shouted, jumping from his mare’s back without bothering to ask her to halt. She was a very good mare, every bone set just as it should be. She had tilted her ears back in a skeptical comment about her rider’s behavior, but she also circled around and come back to see what further foolishness he might have in mind and whether she might be part of it. My second-eldest brother is a very, very good horseman and no ponies on the steppe are better than his.

  I slid down from the saddle and strode toward Gayata. He pulled me into an embrace, and I wrapped my arms around him as far as I could and squeezed hard. I had not seen him for more than two years, and I had not realized until this moment how I had missed him.

  He pushed me back first. “Such tales we have heard!” he said. He looked past me at everyone else. “And these are your Lau. One of them is your sorcerer, I suppose. The one in front, with the red shirt.”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Such tales.” He looked at me again and smiled. “You are thinking you should offer to take your sorcerer somewhere else to camp tonight.”

  “I mean no offense, Gayata—”

  “You will stay with me. Marya would not say anything else, and Tayasa would be disappointed if she did!” He was laughing at me, but kindly. “Our father seemed certain of his decision on the matter even many days after the sorcerer had gone back to his own country, and your mother agreed, so I am not very alarmed at the prospect of bringing this sorcerer to meet my wives.”
/>   I sighed in relief. I had not been certain he would make that decision.

  “How many? Four Lau? Is that one a woman? Marya will be so pleased a Lau woman chose to come with you. That must be Rakasa inGeiro and Bara inGeiro; Rakasa brought my wives a letter from your mother early this spring, so I am not surprised they are with you now. Who is the other young man?”

  “That is Rakasa and Bara,” I agreed, ignoring his question. I said instead, “The Lau horses are not fit for cold weather, but they can run faster than the shiral winds.”

  “I almost believe it,” he said, stepping back to consider my mare. “That is a fine animal of her kind. Good chest, plenty of slope to her shoulder, plenty of power to her quarters. Her head is pretty too, though that is less important. If she were mine, I might breed her to a pony stallion. A foal two generations on from that might be worth something. How is her temper?”

  “All the Lau horses are too soft-tempered for you. Two generations on, a foal might be just as you prefer.”

  “I will ask your sorcerer,” he decided. “These are all fine beasts. He has a good eye.” He glanced at me and added, “For a man as well as a horse, to see you had more worth alive than dead. I was very glad to hear you had not died, Ryo.” He passed over that lightly, saying at once, “He speaks taksu?”

  “He does. They all do, at least a little.”

  “Good.” Seizing his mare’s saddle, Gayata vaulted to her back and turned her toward the approaching company without bothering to touch the reins, which he had twisted around the hook at the front of the saddle before dismounting.