Days of Blood and Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  “Beat the mule as much as it needs,” he remarked, “Stubborn ugly things.”

  “Here!” Meer bellowed. “What did he give you? A stick or suchlike? Throw it away, lad. I’ll teach you how to handle a mule, and beatings have no part in it.”

  Secure in Meer’s blindness the guard grinned and rolled his eyes, but Jahdo tossed the switch away.

  All that morning they followed a hard-packed dirt road east through reasonably familiar country. Although Jahdo had never been more than a mile or two away from Cerr Cawnen, the farmers round about were still his people. Their wooden longhouses, all painted white and roofed with split planks, stood in the midst of fields of volcanic earth so rich some thought it magical Often, as they walked past a fenced field or a pasture, a well-dressed man or a couple of plump children would leave their plowing or cattle to run to the side of the road and stare at them. For the first few miles, Meer strode along in silence, swinging his stick back and forth on the road with one massive hand as he led his horse with the other. Wrapped in his instant homesickness, Jahdo was glad to be left alone at first, but the farther they went, the harder it became to keep back his tears.

  Since he’d never eaten that morning, as the sun rose high in the sky his stomach began to growl. He could imagine his family coming back home for their noon meal, gathering at the long table, and watching while Mam dipped soup from the kettle and cut bread into chunks. He caught his breath with a sob.

  “What’s this?” Meer bellowed. “What do I hear?”

  “Naught, good bard.”

  “Hah! You can’t fool my ears, lad. Don’t even try. Huh. The sun feels hot on my back. Is it near midday?”

  “It is, truly.”

  “Time for us to stop and see what kind of provisions your councilmen gave us, then. Look round. Do you see a stream nearby? We should be watering our animals, anyway.”

  About a quarter mile down the road Jahdo found them a shallow stream with a grassy bank. Working under Meer’s direction, he unbuckled the pack saddles, but Meer himself had to heft them down. Despite his affliction the Gel da’Thae moved remarkably surely when it came to tending his horses. Watching him rub down the white horse, Baki, with a twist of grass, with the bard talking under his breath all the while, or seeing him patting the horse and leading him to the stream, it was hard, in fact, to remember that Meer was blind. The mule received the same attention.

  “Well name you Gidro,” Meer announced. “That means strong in my people’s talk, and a fine strong mule you are.

  Gidro leaned its forehead against the bard’s chest and snorted.

  “Mules are one of the thirteen clever beasts, young Jahdo. Your people abuse them and call them stubborn, but by every demon among us, who can blame the mule? Here, he thinks to himself, why should I be sweating and straining my back all for the benefit of some bald, two-legged thing that smells of meat and piss? All I get out of it is sour hay and a drafty shed. A pox on them all, thinks the mule.”

  Jahdo found himself laughing.

  “That’s better, lad,” Meer said. “I know it’s a hard thing I’ve asked you to do. Now go through those packs, there, and find us a bite to eat.”

  Much to his delight, Jahdo found a lot of food wrapped and cached in various cloth bags, including some chewy honey cakes. Meer had him bring out some dark bread and cheese, which Jahdo sliced up with his grandfather’s knife. Before they ate, however, Meer recited yet another prayer, though mercifully it was a good bit shorter than his effort back at Cerr Cawnen, to thank the god Elmandrel for the food.

  “The gods do matter a fair bit to you, don’t they, Meer?” Jahdo said.

  “They do, and so they should to all the Gel da’ Thae, for we are sinners in their sight, more loathsome than worms.” Meer held out his hand for lunch. “Thanks, lad. That cheese smells good, I must say. At any rate, we all sinned mightily against the three hundred sixty-five gods and the thousands upon thousands of the Children of the Gods, back in the old days, when the Red Reivers fell upon us. Your people, now, they suffered much at the hands of the Lijik Ganda, but as victims they did not sin.”

  “Er, well, that be splendid, then.”

  Meer merely grunted and bit into his bread and cheese. Jahdo followed suit, and for a long time neither of them spoke. Jahdo had heard stories of the old days from priests and singers among his own people, who recited them at public feast days, such as the celebrations of spring and the harvesttime, but he had never considered that those ancient events would someday reach out dead hands to touch his own life. The Slavers lived only in stories, didn’t they, to frighten children into behaving? Stop pinching your sister right now, or the Slavers will come get you—that sort of thing. But he’d just found out that they were real, and he was heading their way.

  Far, far to the east, or so the stories ran, lay a beautiful kingdom that once had belonged to the ancestors of the Rhiddaer folk, where they lived in peace and prosperity near the trees and springs of the ancient gods. One dark day a new people appeared, warriors who thundered down on horseback and killed or enslaved the peaceful farmers. On their stolen land and with their slave labor, these invaders built stone towers and towns made of round houses, where they lived at ease while the ancestors were forced to work the fields. A few at a time, though, the ancestors had slipped away, seeking freedom. Some died in the attempt; others escaped to found a new country, the Rhiddaer, where kings and lords such as commanded the Slavers were forbidden forever by law. Finally, the Slavers’ bloodthirsty ways brought ruin upon their own heads, when a huge civil war, lasting five and a hundred years, tore their kingdom apart. Most of the ancestors escaped during those days of retribution and made their way to freedom in the Rhiddaer. For a long time everyone hoped that the Slavers were all dead, but unfortunately, the warring madness had left them in the end, and their kingdom was prospering again.

  “Meer?” Jahdo said. “The old stories do say that the Slavers used to cut off people’s heads and then tie them to their saddles and stuff. The heads, I mean, not the rest of the people. That be not true, bain’t?”

  “I fear me it is, lad. The lore passed down from bard to bard confirms it.”

  Jahdo dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. After this whole long horrible day, the lore was just one thing too many to endure. He heard Meer sigh and move; then a broad hand fumbled for his shoulder and patted it.

  “Now, now, we’ve got to put our trust in the gods. They’ll guide us and protect us, and the Slavers will never even know we were walking their border.”

  Jahdo sniveled back his tears and wiped his face on his sleeve.

  “Well, I be sorry I did cry.”

  “Don’t you think my heart aches within me, too? I tell you again, lad, warriors we are not, and thus the gods will hold us not to the warrior’s harsh honor.”

  “All right, then, but if ever I do get home again I’ll have to be a warrior when I grow up. I’ll have to join the militia, I mean. Everybody does. I guess it’s not like that in your country.”

  “It’s not, indeed. Only the chosen few become warriors, the best among us, and a grim lot they are, soaked in blood and death from the time they’re but colts.”

  “They be just like the Slavers were, then.”

  Meer laughed, a rumble under his breath.

  “So they are, but I wouldn’t say that to them, if ever you meet some. And truly, you just might in the days ahead. You just might indeed.”

  After they’d eaten, they loaded up the horse and mule again and headed east on the familiar road for the rest of that day. At times as they walked Meer would sing, or at least, Jahdo supposed that you could call it singing, a far different thing from the songs and simple tunes for dancing that his people knew. Meer’s voice rumbled deep and huge to match the rest of him, but it seemed he sang with his throat squeezed tight and forced the air out his nose, too—Jahdo wasn’t exactly sure—so that his notes hissed and wailed as much as they boomed, and the melody flowed up and down a
nd round about in a long cadence of quarter tones and sprung rhythms. Every now and then, Jahdo could have sworn he heard the bard sing chords, all by himself with no instrument to help him. At first the music threatened headaches, but by the third song Jahdo heard the patterns in it, and while he never grew to like it, he found it tolerable.

  That night they made camp beside a duck pond in a farmer’s pasture, within sight of the wooden longhouse and big stone barn. After they’d eaten, Jahdo collected wood and tinder for a little fire, but he saved it for the actual dark. As the sunset faded to twilight, Jahdo found himself staring at the farm, watching the gleam from a lantern dancing in the windows, wondering how big a family lived there and if they were happy. When he wondered if he’d ever see his own family again, he started to cry, and this time Meer let him sob until he’d got it all out and felt better for it.

  “Well, lad, are you sorry you said you wanted to come?”

  Jahdo tried to speak and found his throat frozen. All he could do was make a small choking sound.

  “Here, what’s that mean?” Meer said.

  “Naught.” Jahdo grabbed a handful of grass and blew his nose.

  The Gel da’Thae swung his massive head round as if he were looking Jahdo’s way, but he said nothing. All round in the velvet evening insects buzzed and chirred. Jahdo tossed the ill-used grass away.

  “Meer? Why are you going east?”

  “That’s a fitting question, considering how I’ve dragged you away from hearth and home, but I’m not going to answer it.”

  “Here! Not fair!”

  “Fair has naught to do with it.”

  Jahdo felt all his homesickness boil and turn to rage. He scrambled to his feet.

  “Then you may just find your way without me. I’m going home.”

  He grabbed a bag of food from the ground and marched off, sighting on the last glow of the setting sun. Behind him Meer howled, a huge sound as if ten wolves sang.

  “Come back, come back!”

  Jahdo heard stumblings and cursings, but he kept walking.

  “Stop!” Meer’s anguish floated after him. “Wait! I’ll tell you, then.”

  Jahdo stopped and turned round, but he hesitated. In the last of the light he could just see the bard’s silhouette, flailing round with his stick as he tried to follow over the rocks and hummocks. He moved remarkably well, considering, but he was angling away fast from the path that Jahdo had actually taken. He’ll die out here without me, Jahdo thought.

  “Meer, stop! I’m coming back.”

  The bard sobbed once in relief and held still. Jahdo led him back to their camp, sat Meer down on a log, then busied himself with striking sparks from his flint and steel until the readied tinder at last caught. Jahdo blew the spark into a flame, fed in a little dried grass, then some twigs, and at last pieces of broken branch. As the light leapt and spread he moved back from the unwelcome heat. Meer was sitting with his head between his hands, his face turned as if he were staring into the fire. Seeing him look so defeated brought Jahdo a strange insight: never before had he argued with, much less bested, a grown man, and rather than exulting, he was frightened. Yet he refused to back down.

  “Well, tell me now. Why are you going east?”

  “It’s a long and bitter story, but you’re right enough that you should hear it. Pay attention, though, because I can only bear to repeat it this once.” Meer cleared his throat several times before he went on. “I have an elder brother who became a powerful razkan, what you’d call a captain in your tongue, I suppose, the man who leads a group of warriors. And what with his raiding and then the legitimate battles between our various cities, he became famous, gathering many a free-born warrior round him, as well as the usual slave soldiers he bought with all his booty.”

  “Hold a moment. Slave soldiers? How can you give a slave weapons and make them fight?”

  “They’ve been bred and born among the Gel da’Thae, and they know that if they fight well, they’ll be set free.”

  “But still, I don’t understand. You think they’d just kill this razkan fellow and run away.”

  “Run to what? The wilderness? They know the civic authorities would hunt them down, and the gods wouldn’t help them the way they helped your people escape, because they’d be rebels and traitors.”

  “The gods helped us?”

  “Of course they did. They sent their own children to save and succor you, out on the grasslands to the south.”

  “I never did hear that before. I heard that it was some people who raised horses or suchlike. Why did the gods help us?”

  “Now here!” Meer spoke with some asperity. “Do you want me to finish this tale or not? Fewer questions, if you please.”

  “I be sorry.”

  “Very well, then. Now, as I say, my brother, Thavrae his name is, his warrior’s name, I mean, though Svar was the name our mother gave him. Ah alas, woe betide the day she birthed him, and woe betide that his kin and clan have lived to see his infamy!”

  “What’s he been doing?”

  “Whoring after strange gods. Gods? Did I say gods? One of the three hundred sixty-four kinds of demon, more like! False gods, anyway. They’re supposed to be new gods. Now I ask you. If a god wasn’t around to help make the world, what kind of a god can she be? Gods don’t just pop up all of a sudden like, out of nowhere, appearing at your table like some unmarried uncle in search of a dinner!”

  Jahdo giggled.

  “Just so.” Meer nodded firmly. “But for some years now these false prophets have been coming round, preaching these new gods to anyone stupid enough to listen. These so-called seers come from the wild tribes of the far north, where the demons have been appearing and working marvels, or so they say. Alshandra’s the name they mention most, a powerful goddess of war, or so they call her.”

  “Your people, they’d be liking her, then.”

  “Just so. But most of these prophets are gone now. Some got themselves caught and strangled in the public square by the authorities, and the rest haven’t been seen for some while. They’ve turned sensible, if you take my meaning, but a few fools have listened to them. And my brother, my own blood kin, little Svar as I’ll always think of him, he’s one of them, claiming allegiance to this Alshandra creature. It broke my mother’s heart.”

  “I’ll wager it did. That be too bad, Meer, really ‘tis so.” Jahdo was trying to imagine what the mother of a man such as Meer would be like—even more formidable than his own mother, he supposed. “I guess she could talk no sense into him, huh?”

  “No one could make him listen to reason, no one, not our mother, not our aunts, not our uncles. But anyway, some weeks ago Thavrae led his men out east.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, partly to spare our city outright war between his warband and that of his rivals. He did listen to our mother about that, when she begged him to take his men away before citizen slaughtered citizen in the streets. The authorities wanted to strangle him for blasphemy, you see, but you don’t just arrest a razkan when he’s got his warband round him.”

  “Then he does have some honor left.”

  “Some, truly, though a poor comfort to our mother it is.”

  “Wait a moment. You said these demons live in the north, right? Why did Thavrae head east?”

  “I’m coming to that part. Hush. Apparently he’d received an omen from the gods, sending him to fetch a particular thing from the lands of the Slavers.”

  “What was it?”

  “How would I know? But I was sent to find him and beg him to come home.”

  “Sent by your mother?”

  “Just so.”

  “Do you think you—I mean we—can find him?”

  “I don’t know.” Meer sighed, running both hands through his tangled mane of hair. “By now he and his men should have found whatever this mysterious object is and be returning. I hope we’ll meet them on the road back.”

  “What road? We don’t even know where we’re going
.”

  “True.”

  “Then how do you think we’ll ever find him?”

  “If I can get within a reasonable distance, the brother bond will guide us.”

  “The what?”

  “The brother bond.” Meer hesitated for a long time. “Now, that’s one thing I can never explain to you, Jahdo, even if you were to walk away again and leave me here to starve. It’s a magick, and some magicks are Gel da’Thae. They cannot be shared. In the temple we swear holy vows.”

  “Well, all right, then. My mam does always say that if you swear a thing, it’s needful for you to do it. But I still don’t see how we’re going to find him. What if he goes north and we go south or somewhat like that?”

  “It might happen, truly. But a mother’s charge is a sacred charge, and I must travel and try.”

  Jahdo hesitated, considering.

  “Be you sure this is all you’re doing? I did hear you talking to Verrarc back home, Councilman Verrarc I mean, and you were talking about your mother and stuff, but I did get this strange feeling. You weren’t telling him everything, were you?”

  Meer laughed.

  “I figured I was choosing the cleverest lad in town, and I was right. But actually, I wasn’t lying. I was merely editing. I didn’t want to go into detail. There is somewhat about Councilman Verrarc that creeps my flesh. I hear things in his voice, somehow.”

  “Things?”

  “Overtones, odd hesitations, a peculiar timbre. He sounds enraged, but at the same time, he reeks of fear.” Meer paused, considering. “I can barely put it into words, it’s such a subtle thing. But he’s an ominous man, in his way, an ominous man.”

  Jahdo shuddered. Yet once again the buried memory tried to rise, bringing with it a cold shudder. He caught his breath with a little gasp. Meer turned an inquiring ear his way.

  “Geese walking on my grave,” Jahdo said. “Oh, ych, I wish I hadn’t said that.”

  “More likely the evening breeze, lad. I wouldn’t take it as an omen.”

  Later, as Jahdo was falling asleep, he remembered that Meer had found him clever. In spite of the trouble this opinion had got him into, he was pleased.