The blow did not fall. I was on my feet, and not dead. Blood ran down my chest and my forearm, and my cheekbone might be cracked, but those injuries were nothing. I had no weapon, but that did not matter. Yaro inTasiyo stood perfectly still, his arms at his sides and his sword abandoned on the ground at his feet. His muscles were tight, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide. He was not moving at all.
I understood at once. But at least five heartbeats passed before I could bring myself to acknowledge that I knew what had happened. Then I turned my back to Yaro and looked away from the lake, toward the inGara tents.
Many people were running toward me, toward us, still too far to see who they were. But I recognized Aras at once; his dark, thin height and his straight stance. He was not running. He was standing still, at the top of the hill, at the edge of the inGara camp. I had known he would be there. Even across all that distance, I knew he was not looking at Yaro inTasiyo. He was looking at me.
Yaro stood exactly where he was, his will very plainly stolen from him by sorcery. Many of the people running toward us probably knew that already. Everyone who had not already realized would understand in a handful of breaths.
“Ryo—” Lalani began, her voice shaking.
“Yes,” I said. “There is nothing to do but explain everything exactly as it happened.” I looked up the slope again, toward Aras. My father was beside him now. They spoke to one another, a few quiet words, and then they began to come toward us, walking together. Geras appeared at the top of the slope, following with long strides.
Garoyo came to us first, running, from the north and west. He had been close, moving from one of our sentries to another, guarding against just such an ambush. I realized, now that it was too late, that Yaro had very likely been waiting near this place for Garoyo, not for anyone else, not for me. He might have taken a woman if the chance had come; perhaps he might have intended that. But when he had seen this was impossible, he had instead concealed himself here, where my brother and our warriors would certainly patrol. But he had not attacked any other warrior. I thought he had almost certainly intended to attack Garoyo. Only I had come to this place first, and he had changed his mind.
Garoyo might have thought the same; I could not tell. He gave Yaro a swift look up and down, and then turned away. He said to me, “Take off your shirt. Let me see your chest.”
“The cut is not bad,” I said.
But sometimes, when a fight goes fast, one does not feel how severe an injury is. I took off my shirt. Both of us ignored Yaro. Plainly he was not dangerous any longer. Many other people had come by this time, and many more were still coming. Someone pointed at Yaro and started to say something, but Garoyo said curtly, without even glancing that way, “Be quiet. That is not for any of us to judge,” and the man closed his mouth and stepped back, lifting his hands in a conciliatory gesture.
“This is not bad,” my brother said to me, much more gently.
I could not bring myself to answer him.
He cut a strip of cloth off my shirt for a rough bandage, using the rest of the shirt as a pad. By the time he had finished that, our father and Aras had both come to the place. Most of the other people moved away, leaving a clear space around them. Around Aras. They were afraid of him again now. I could hardly set any fault against them for that.
“Koro will come,” my father said to me.
“Yes, I have absolutely no doubt that everyone will come,” I snapped, unable to prevent myself from speaking sharply. Garoyo cuffed me lightly, and I clenched my teeth together hard and bowed my head in apology. My father pretended he had not noticed my tone and did not rebuke me.
“How long can you hold him?” he asked Aras. Unlike mine, his tone was completely neutral.
“As long as necessary, lord,” Aras answered. “I see little use in letting him go now.” He looked at Yaro, then away again. “I wish I had seen him earlier. But so many people nearby make it impossible to see one more man. I did not know he was there until I heard Ryo’s fury, and knew he thought he was about to die.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry, Ryo.”
“The fault is not yours,” Garoyo told him before I could. He added to our father, “The fault is mine. Despite all my care, this enemy found a chance to attack one of our people and a guest of our people. This time, I will certainly lay down my sword. I ask you to give it to a more worthy man.”
Our father nodded acknowledgment, but he said, “You took appropriate measures to prevent such an attack from occurring, warleader. If no one had walked so far from the men you set to watch, our enemy would have found no opportunity. As it was, he could make no chance save against a warrior. If that warrior had been more alert for the possibility, this would not have happened.”
“This is true,” I said at once. “I should not have walked so far from the camp, but if I did, I certainly should not have been so disgracefully careless as to allow myself to become distracted. I think he meant to attack you, warleader. I am certain he meant that. But I gave him a much better target.”
“I am still at fault, that he came so close to our camp and chose his moment as he pleased.”
“Enough,” our father ordered. “We will consider this matter at a later time.” He was watching Koro inKarano approach. We were all watching our king approach, with many inKarano and inVotaro people. Darra was coming as well, walking with her father. Also Elaro Porakario. Royova inVotaro had not come yet, but I could see mounted warriors riding toward us, fast, all their ponies at a canter, which is not the way one ordinarily rides through the camps. Probably Royova was among those warriors.
My mother had come now as well. As I had known would happen, everyone was coming. Already many people were present, of many different tribes.
Koro did not hurry. He came slowly, perhaps in part because a king should not so forget dignity as to run, but probably to give other people time to come to the place. When he finally came to the top of the slope that ran down to the lakeshore, he waved away everyone else and came the last small distance by himself. When he reached us, Koro nodded to my father. Then he looked thoughtfully at Yaro inTasiyo, still standing absolutely still, very plainly unable to move. Finally he looked around at everyone else. He said, to my father, “This place is good for a gathering. People on the slope above will be able to see everything that happens. Will inGara permit this gathering to occur here on their land?”
“Yes,” said my father, which was the only thing he could say.
Koro nodded. He glanced again up and around at everyone watching, which by this time was a great many people. He said in a clear, loud voice that everyone could hear, “Everyone will sit.”
On the slopes above the lake, for as far as I could see, everyone settled to the ground. Here and there someone important, the lord or warleader of a tribe, a singer or a poet, or someone else important, made their way forward so they would be close enough to hear and see everything.
Here, on the lakeshore, no one merely sat down. Everyone knelt, even my father. Only Koro and Royova inVotaro and the inVotaro warriors stayed on their feet. And Yaro inTasiyo, who stayed exactly where he was. A low murmur rose up. If anyone amid all this gathering had not yet understood that Aras held him by sorcery, probably that person understood it now. I could not understand why Aras had not made him kneel, but then I thought, no, to force a man to his knees by means of sorcery would have been even worse than holding him still.
Koro waited long enough for everyone above us to find places and for a little time more. Finally he spoke to Aras, still in that clear voice, “You have taken this man’s will from him by means of sorcery. It is your will that holds him there in that way.”
The murmur this time was louder. Obviously everyone understood this, but hearing it out loud was different.
Aras sighed, almost inaudibly. No one farther away than I could have heard him. But then he answered, “Yes, o king, it is as you say,” in much the same clear tone.
This time, there was silence.
&n
bsp; “Royova, take charge of this man,” said the king. He indicated Yaro with a small movement of his hand. “Do not permit him to cause trouble. Bind him hand and foot if he does not have enough pride to keep still on his own account.” Then he said to Aras, “Let him go.”
Aras did not even glance at Yaro. But he freed him. Everyone saw the difference, even before Yaro glared at him, and then at Koro. He declared, with a forceful gesture toward Royova, “I do not need to be tied up like a dog or a sacrifice! I will stand.”
“You will kneel,” Koro told him. “And you will not speak without permission. When I wish to hear your words, I will tell you of that wish.”
For a long breath, it seemed that Yaro would not obey him. But finally, though anyone could see his fury, the warleader of the inTasiyo knelt. He did not bow his head or lower his gaze. But he knelt, and he had at least enough pride that he did not speak or shout or make any other kind of trouble.
“Now, tell me how this happened,” Koro ordered, turning back to Aras.
Before Aras could answer, I jumped to my feet and spoke as forcefully as I could. “Yaro inTasiyo hid here, at the lakeshore. Perhaps he meant to attack my brother or someone else, but he attacked me. I was careless. He took me completely by surprise. He would have killed me, I could not have won that fight, I had already lost. Aras stopped him by means of this forbidden act. In one way, he was wrong to do it, but in another way, he was not wrong. If he had not acted in that way, I would be dead and Yaro inTasiyo would have had time to get away, into the heights.”
Koro listened to me without changing expression. When I finished, he nodded. “Have you anything else to say, Ryo inGara?”
I took a breath. Then I knelt, bowed, and said, “Everything I said was true. But I apologize for the disgraceful manner in which I set myself forward when you spoke to Aras.”
“I forgive your insolence,” Koro said. “I will be lenient only once.”
I bowed lower, touching my face to the earth. Then I straightened, anxious and angry, to hear what our king would say next.
He said to Aras, “You told me once that you had sworn an oath not to do such things with your sorcery. You swore to me you had never done it. Was that the truth then?”
Aras got to his feet to answer. He spoke in a clear voice. “That was true then, o king. I told you that when I had thirteen summers, I swore I would never take anyone's will by means of sorcery. The oath was strong, for I made the declaration absolute. So strong an oath might have been difficult to keep in other matters, but I did not find this oath difficult. Even when I was a boy, I found the whole idea ... appalling. Revolting. I had not done it before I took this oath, and certainly I did not do so afterward. Later, it sometimes became my task to ... to clean up the damage other sorcerers had done, and the idea became still more appalling to me.” He paused.
Then he went on. “Yet I told you as well, Koro inKarano, winter king, that if pressed hard enough, any man would break an oath. Today, I was pressed that hard. I broke my oath and did this terrible thing because that seemed better to me than permitting Yaro inTasiyo to kill the son of Sinowa inGara. I could not endure standing by while a young and honorable man; a son of the lord of the inGara, whose guest I am; and a guest of my own house, was cut down in a disgraceful act of murder, dishonorable in every way.”
Koro nodded, expressionless, acknowledging this statement. He said to Yaro. “You may answer this charge, if you can find any way to do so.”
Jumping to his feet, Yaro declared furiously, “The ban was always wrong! Quarrels between two tribes is a matter that should be left for the tribes to settle!”
“That decision may have been a good decision or a bad decision,” Koro answered. “But your behavior today was certainly disgraceful, unfitting for any warrior, far less the warleader of a tribe. Do you wish to explain your attack on Ryo inGara? Do you deny anything this young man says?”
“The son of the lord of the inGara had no right to take my son and deal with him in any way at all! He broke the ban first! The inGara broke the ban and you did nothing!”
On the hillside above, Tano stood up. He came down the slope, walked forward, knelt to our king, bowed, stood up again, and said, his voice steady, “I was trespassing on inGara land. That act alone merited my death. Ryo inGara did not do anything wrong when he punished me for that. He was extraordinarily generous to me.” Then he looked Yaro in the face and went on. “You wanted me to murder the son of the inGara lord by means of lies and deceit, as you would have done today. I think you intended to set your own act against a different tribe. Probably the inKera. I wonder whether you have hidden a dead warrior near here, whose body you could have flung down near Ryo’s body, to create doubt and cause bad feeling between the inGara and the inKera.”
A shocked silence fell at this appalling idea. Yaro stepped forward aggressively, declaring, “I have no need to set the act against anyone else! I would be glad if the lord of the inGara knew the name of the man who killed his son!”
Tano had taken a step back, but two inVotaro warriors had seized Yaro and held him. That gave Tano a chance to steady himself. He shook his head. “Probably you would have been glad of that, but it would please you more to cause trouble between friends. Soro inKera offended you last night. I think probably you intended the deceit as I explained it.”
Soro inKera had not waited to hear any argument. He was already on his feet, coming down the slope toward us. He was too proud to shout, so he came all the way. Then he said to Koro, “I wish to have all my people look to see if one of our warriors is missing. I think my warriors should search along the lakeshore here, and in all this rough ground.”
“A good place to hide a body would be there,” Aras said quietly. He pointed along the lake, to where great broken rocks and slabs of ice lay jumbled together a little farther to the north, half hidden within the freezing mist from the waterfalls. He said, “A man could put a body somewhere there, perhaps just past a place where tall boulders lean together, just above the ice of the lake. A man looking for danger might not find a dead man there, but if warriors searched for a man who had fled that way, they would find the body. They might think the man ran just so far before dying of his wounds.”
“Your people should stay where they are,” Koro said to the lord of the inKera. Then he said to Royova inVotaro, “Have your warriors go and look.”
Everyone obeyed him. In a very little time, the inVotaro warriors brought a dead man to us, a man killed with a cut across the belly. This was not a man I knew. One of the inVotaro said, “By all the signs, this man was wounded as we see, then fell and dragged himself to that place beyond the boulders. If another dead man had been found here, I might have believed they killed each other.”
Soro inKera had been studying the dead man’s face. Now, with no change to his expression, he said to our king, “I lay a charge of deceit and murder against the warleader of the inTasiyo.”
Koro nodded. “I will judge this matter now.” He asked Tano, “How did you know?”
Tano shook his head. “I did not know. I thought it was something the lord of the inTasiyo would do if he could. He has done such things before. He has often said that the best way to weaken an enemy is to make him quarrel with someone who should be a friend.”
“These are lies,” snapped Yaro, and began to say something else, but Koro signaled to Royova inVotaro, who in turn made a short gesture. The inVotaro warriors at once forced Yaro to his knees, bringing out thongs to bind his hands and feet, cutting a length of cloth with which to gag him.
Koro ignored this. He asked Aras, “How did you know?”
Aras sighed. “I did not know, o king, until Tano inGara spoke of it. In so large a gathering, I cannot see one man’s thoughts well unless I know him and have reason to look carefully. I am sorry for that. I would have prevented all these things from happening if I could. When Tano spoke, at once I saw in Yaro’s mind that this accusation was true. But I did not know anything about i
t until that moment.”
Koro nodded. He said, “I have heard enough. Everyone will kneel.” Everyone standing knelt, except for Royova and the inVotaro warriors. Koro waited. Finally, when everyone was quiet, he looked around at everyone and lifted his hands to show he was making an important decision and everyone should listen. He said, “The inTasiyo warleader has committed many disgraceful acts. The inTasiyo must be aware that their warleader is a dishonorable man. It is impossible that they have not been aware. They are a people who have thrown away their honor. This is my judgment. If I am wrong, then I ask the gods to show me that I am mistaken.”
Lowering his hands, he waited. For forty breaths, he did not move. Nothing happened. All the world lay quiet. No one in the gathering rose to protest Koro’s words. The wind had risen, and many more clouds had come across the sky, but not enough to hide the face of the Sun. He stood high now. Brilliant lances of sunlight speared down where the clouds were broken, thrusting from the vault of the heavens to the earth. An eagle turned high above, black when he passed below the clouds, golden when he swept through a shaft of sunlight. I was probably not the only person who took note of that eagle.
Finally Koro went on, speaking clearly, but not as loudly. “Royova, this is my command. You will take the warleader of the inTasiyo out into the steppe. When you have traveled a day’s ride from this place, cut off his hair and burn it. Cut out the tongue that tells such disgraceful lies. Cut off the hands that have performed such dishonorable actions. Leave him there and continue west, with as many warriors as you see fit, to inTasiyo lands. Tell the people there that their tribe no longer exists. Any warrior who will not renounce that name, put to death. Any woman who will not renounce it, put to death as well. Leave the heads of the dead for the animals. Any child orphaned in this way, take up, to be given to a tribe that may teach that child to behave properly. Disperse the nameless people who used to be inTasiyo. Drive them from that territory. Let them go to other tribes and ask to take those names. If no one will take those people, they may leave all the lands known to me or they may kill themselves, but neither nameless people nor anyone who claims the inTasiyo name is welcome in any land I rule.”
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