Dárja had framed their efforts as protecting the nieddaš about to give birth. But Marnej was escorting the ancient healer to his death. And, even though he knew he had no control over Okta’s life, and respected that the healer’s death would bring a new life to the Jápmemeahttun, he still felt like an executioner.
“Are you afraid?” Marnej asked, shattering the snow-hushed quiet.
“Afraid of what?” Okta murmured, as if lost in his own visions. “Traveling out here?”
“No,” Marnej said, then felt his next words stick in his throat. “Your death,” he croaked.
Okta faced him, but the hood of his furs shadowed his eyes as if death was already claiming him, piece by piece.
“No. I do not fear my end,” he said. Then he paused as if he were considering the matter further. “No. My fear is for the future. I worry for you and Dárja and Kalek. I want the lives of the Jápmemeahttun to continue long beyond me. But I am not sure how that will come to pass.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Marnej said.
“It is a noble sacrifice, and it may yet succeed,” Okta said. “But we are a closed circle.”
“What do you mean?” Marnej asked, reminded once again of how little he knew about the Immortals.
“Our numbers are set. I leave and another will take my place. We will not grow.” Okta took a deep breath, then released it in a long ribbon of steam. He seemed to shrink before Marnej’s eyes, as if the ancient healer had only ever been made of the air he held inside himself.
“This order saved us in the past, when our numbers had become so vast we overran the land,” Okta said. “It was the gods’ way of preserving a balance among all of their creations. But the wars with the Olmmoš took many of us and I am afraid the last battle has sealed our fate.”
“There are still almai and boaris,” Marnej pointed out.
“Yes, yes. But so few, and there will never be more.”
“But you changed once. You can change again.”
“Perhaps the gods will gift us once more. But I am afraid we have squandered their mercy on wars with the Olmmoš.”
“You didn’t choose the wars,” Marnej argued
Okta shook his head, his grey beard peeking out, flecked white with snow. “I chose to ride into battle, as surely as any other almai.”
“No, I mean . . . my kind pushed you into it. We came after you. We hunted you.”
“True. But looking back, I can see we were not blameless in what came to pass.”
Marnej felt a rising sense of frustration. “What about my father and me?”
Okta shrugged. “You are special. Like Dárja.”
“Maybe that’s the future,” Marnej insisted.
“Let us hope,” Okta said, sounding weary. He faced forward again, letting silence descend.
Okta was thankful for a reprieve from the boy’s questions. He knew Marnej sought only to help. Still, he felt doom’s mocking presence within each of his own answers. Once, he had advocated the possibility of change, but that was before the last battle. Before they had lost so many. Okta did not believe they would ever recover from it. Whatever small strides they made now only served to prolong an inevitable decline.
However, he admired Marnej and Dárja their youth and bravery. They reminded him of Djorn and the others who had fought on after the rest had withdrawn into the Song. They had honored what they believed to be right. While Okta had not shared their convictions, he respected their valor. Djorn’s memory reminded Okta not only about the choice he’d made, but also about the more fateful choices made by Irjan. Both Dárja and Marnej shared Djorn’s life force and lived because of it. But there was a deeper connection. One which Okta had often considered when he contemplated the gods who had shaped and spared them.
It had been Djorn’s mánná, Mare, who had birthed Irjan. When Irjan found Djorn and Aillun, he unknowingly brought together a bloodline in his attempt to save Marnej. Okta wondered if this union was an act of the gods or the result of one man’s frantic effort to save his child. So many times he had believed himself capable of changing events, only to discover he had been powerless. Maybe this was different. Maybe the gods had acted through this one Olmmoš to help their kind find a new way forward?
“You may be right, Marnej,” Okta said, finding a sliver of hope in this new understanding.
Startled, Marnej pulled back on his reins, causing his binna to stop.
“About what?” he asked.
“About you and your father,” said Okta.
Marnej’s proud features furrowed in concentration as he nudged his reindeer to keep moving.
So unlike his father’s gaunt, brooding countenance, Okta thought.
“I don’t understand,” Marnej said, still unable to get his binna to respond.
Okta stopped himself from reminding the boy to not fight the animal, asking instead, “How much did Einár tell you about Irjan?”
With the binna moving again, Marnej settled back into his saddle. “Well, he told me of my father’s time with your kind. I think it was his way of warning me not to make the same mistakes.”
“No. No. I mean about your abilities,” Okta said.
Marnej shrugged. “He said we shared the same ones.”
“Did he ever speak to you of how Irjan came to possess those abilities?”
“No.”
“You did not ask?”
“I wasn’t about to question the Elder,” Marnej said, huffing in disbelief.
Okta pushed back his hood. The cold brought a fresh ache to his ears, but a frank discussion could not be carried on while cloaked and hidden. “What do you know about our life cycles?”
“You just said yourself it’s closed—one birth for one death.”
“Yes. But, what else?”
“Are we talking about how you create life?” Marnej asked warily.
Okta laughed. “Yes, in a manner of speaking. But I am not asking about the workings of it.”
“Good,” Marnej said, relief apparent in his relaxing shoulders.
Okta watched the youth resist the sway of the binna beneath him. He will learn, Okta reminded himself.
“You have lived long enough with us to have noted the differences between your kind and ours,” Okta said, hiding his question within the statement.
“Yes.”
“Well?” Okta prodded.
Marnej twisted in his seat. “I don’t know?” he said. A hint of annoyance edged his voice.
“What about the mánáid?” Okta asked, wanting Marnej to come to his own understanding.
“What about the children?”
“What do you notice?”
“They’re all female.”
Okta nodded and searched Marnej’s shadowed face for comprehension. Gods, this boy will wear me down before I have a chance to ascend, Okta thought unkindly. But he persisted in his method. “What about your father? Tell me his story as you know it.”
“When my father was a little boy,” Marnej began, “the Jápmemeahttun killed his family and burned his house . . .” He stopped.
“Exactly,” Okta said. “We are born female and . . .”
“He was born male,” Marnej said. He pushed back his hood. “But how is that possible?”
Okta steered his binna around a rangy spread of birch trees. “There are stories from the days before the Olmmoš and the Jápmemeahttun were at war of the coupling of our two kinds.”
Marnej’s mouth twitched. Okta found the boy’s discomfort amusing. “We are not that dissimilar.”
“No. It’s not that,” Marnej protested, his cold-reddened cheeks flushing even brighter. “It’s just that if it’s possible, then why aren’t there more like me and my father?”
“When the Olmmoš arrived among us, we believed the gods had given our kind the duty of biebmoeadni. We were to be guide mothers of the Olmmoš, not make more of our own kind.”
“But it did happen,” Marnej said, latching on to the idea.
“Yes. It did. And that led to the Olmmoš casting off our guidance to seek war,” Okta warned.
“And after the war? My father was the only one?” Marnej sounded dubious.
“Perhaps there were others,” Okta said. “But none of them entered the Song.”
“What about me?” the boy asked.
Okta shook his head. “I am not sure, Marnej. Perhaps you are one of a kind. Perhaps you represent something we might become. I cannot say.”
Okta and Marnej rode for the better part of three days in the silence of the Olmmoš realm when the Song of All deserted them. Marnej had sworn bitterly, but Okta had remained serene, as if the shift had not affected him. After the initial shock had worn off, Marnej had assumed that it would be a relief to be back in a world he understood. But the absence of the songs had left him feeling hollow and lost. In particular, he wished he could still hear Dárja’s song. He prayed to the gods that she and Úlla were still safe.
With no song to concentrate on, Marnej’s mind began to obsess on what Okta had shared with him. There had to be a way to save the Immortals. It happened before, he reasoned. It could happen again. But it would be madness to approach the Council of Elders to suggest that their kind might be saved if they interbred with the Olmmoš. They would think him a traitor. They would never consider joining with the people who’d hunted them into extinction. And even if they did agree, how would they approach the Olmmoš? The blood lust of his kind hadn’t changed. They were rejoicing that the Immortals had been wiped from existence. So what could they do? Steal away some Olmmoš and enslave them?
“It’s all madness,” he said out loud.
“What is madness?” Okta asked.
“Nothing,” Marnej said hastily, focusing his attention on his surroundings for the first time that day. So far, he’d been content to follow Okta’s lead. Ahead, to the south, he now saw a familiar stone gorge. Even blanketed in snow, there was no mistaking the fissure that allowed men to pass through rock.
Marnej looked uneasily at Okta. “You know where we’re going.”
The statement probably sounded more like a question because the healer answered, “Yes. I have been there before.”
“So have I, Okta. Tell me we travel beyond it.” Apprehension had crept into Marnej’s voice.
“I am afraid not,” the ancient healer said placidly, refusing to make eye contact.
Marnej’s anger flared. “You’ve known this whole time. You just didn’t tell me.”
“It is my Origin. I traveled here as a nieddaš and gave birth here.” Okta turned to him. His eyes looked tired. “If I told you we were going to the Great Valley, would that have changed your mind about coming?”
Marnej gritted his teeth, feeling trapped. “No. You know I’d still be here. It’s just that . . . I would’ve been prepared.”
Okta sighed and nudged his binna toward the hills in the distance. “Believe me, if I could have chosen another spot, I would have.”
CHAPTER FORTY
HERKO AND GÁRAL SAT in the musty corner of the travelers’ hut outside of Mehjala. They sipped juhka from rough wooden mugs, listening to the joiken of travelers. Some chanted of the hardship of their lives. Others sang of the freedom of the wind. All the while, the two Piijkij watched the comings and goings of visitors. Only one soldier had come in, but he had been too small to interest either Herko or Gáral. They would have looked like boys who had outgrown their winter woolens if they had tried to fit into his uniform.
“My beard has grown while we’ve been waiting,” Herko complained.
Gáral scanned the newly arrived. “You can go and send in another who might appreciate the warmth.”
“All right. All right,” Herko grumbled.
The door to the travelers’ hut swung open. Gáral tensed at the sight of two soldiers. He nudged Herko and nodded his head in the direction of the door.
We just need to wait until these two have had their fill of cups, he thought, still listening to the conversations around him about the mold in the barley stock, the aches in the joints, and the recent rain that had turned snow to ice.
Herko signaled to the hutkeeper for more juhka. The woman gave him a brusque nod, then went to see to the soldiers.
When she returned with their drinks, Herko gulped his, then fell back into a slouch, his eyes slitted as if asleep. Gáral knew his comrade still watched the soldiers. As did he, noting that although both men sat, they had not taken off their cloaks. When handed their cups, the soldiers drank the warmed juhka without comment, then called for a second round. Resigned for a long wait, Gáral was surprised to see the soldiers drop a coin in the woman’s palm when she refilled their cups. With a gusto worthy of Herko, the two drained their second round, then stood to wind their way through those gathered by the fire pit. As the soldiers passed, Gáral leaned back into the shadows, his hand upon his discarded furs.
Herko was already on his feet, downing the dregs of Gáral’s cup. “What?” he muttered. “That might be my last drink for a long while.”
“Come on,” Gáral hissed.
Herko hurried after him.
Outside, the two soldiers cut through the trees and into the darkness.
“Follow my lead,” Gáral said, padding silently after the soldiers, Herko on his heels.
“Excuse me viel’ja,” Gáral called out, “did you drop this pouch?” He lifted a leather purse in the air, jingling it.
The two soldiers turned.
“Who names us?” one of the soldiers called out as they walked back toward the waiting Piijkij.
“I will take the one on the left. You take the one on the right,” Gáral whispered.
Herko grunted, standing back.
When the soldiers reached them, the one on the left held out his hand for the purse. Gáral dropped it into his palm. The soldier hefted its weight, then turned and grinned at his comrade. When he shifted back around, he met the full force of Gáral’s fist, just as Herko leapt forward, skewering the other with his dagger.
Herko immediately lugged his dead soldier into the woods, where he began stripping him.
“You should not have killed him,” Gáral admonished, picking up the fallen purse.
Herko glanced up. “You’re suggesting I should’ve left him alive?”
Gáral rolled his moaning soldier onto his stomach. “At least until you got the clothes off him. The uniforms are no good to us with blood all down the front of them.”
Herko patted his dead soldier’s face. “A little blood never hurt anybody.” He yanked the man’s boots off, then rolled the breeches down, letting the man’s legs fall back in the snow with a powdery thump.
The soldier Gáral had punched groaned again.
Herko looked over. “Dead ones don’t make so much noise,” he pointed out, grinning as he pulled off a woolen tunic.
Gáral straightened and kicked his moaning soldier in the head. The man fell silent.
Herko gathered up scattered clothing, saying, “Much quicker when they’re dead.”
Gáral ignored the taunt, tugging off his soldier’s tunic. When the man was lying naked in the snow, he unsheathed his sword, then plunged it through the man’s chest. Withdrawing the bloodied blade, he was careful to run it through the snow before wiping it on the man’s pale, fleshy thigh.
“That is how you avoid bloodstains on your clothes,” he said to Herko as he rolled his dead soldier into the tree well of a broad pine. Gáral kicked snow onto the body, then stood back. “Hurry up or I will cover you as well.”
Herko heaved his soldier into the tree’s round gulley. He scooted out of the way just as Gáral batted the snow-laden branches. A deluge of powdery snow covered the bloody slush below. From beyond a tight copse of larch, the rest of the Piijkij emerged, bringing their horses.
“You succeeded?” asked Válde.
Herko and Gáral held up the uniforms.
“Herko stained his,” Gáral announced.
“He usually does,�
� Mures teased.
The others joined in as the two Piijkij finished lashing their uniforms to their saddles.
“Seven more to go,” Redde said.
Válde smiled. “I know just the place to find them.”
Herko tugged at his tunic. The faded yellow was stained a dull brown with dried blood. He tied the red woven belt of a foot soldier around his waist. “Lowest rank,” he mumbled in disgust.
“You look just like a true Believer,” Redde beamed, batting his eyes at Herko, who took a step forward, but was held back by Edo’s hand.
“You wouldn’t want to split those seams,” Mures added.
Válde stood by Gáral as he adjusted the soldier’s black felt cap down over his ears.
“We can offer no aid this time,” Válde said in a hushed tone.
“We will not need it,” Gáral declared, shrugging himself into the crudely embroidered cloak. “Herko is a natural thief and spiteful enough to take down anyone who stands in his way.”
“All the same . . .”
Gáral cut him short. “Save your speech for when we have returned.”
Válde inclined his head, his self-control irritatingly unflappable.
Gáral signaled to Herko, who then handed Feles the reins to his horse. “I trust you to take care of her,” he said, then turned a mean eye toward Mures and Redde who snickered.
“Herko,” Gáral called out, drawing away from the group.
Theirs was a straightforward plan. The two of them would walk into the garrison, locate the stores, take what they needed, and ride out on stolen horses. Simple enough, but with room for much to go wrong. Still, the plan suited Gáral’s mood. He was tired of hiding. He wanted to stand in the open. Also, the thought of wreaking havoc while wearing a True Believer’s uniform appealed to him.
Herko caught up, scratching at his sides. “I think this mother’s cur had fleas,” he groused.
For a moment, Gáral wondered if he had made the right choice in choosing Herko. Aloud he said, “Do not make me regret bringing you along.”
Herko pulled his cloak tightly about him. “Don’t think you could do this without me, Gáral. You may’ve served the Avr personally, but he’s gone. You’re no better than any of us now.”
Dreams of the Dark Sky Page 35