by Caleb Carr
The Layzin stands and, without deigning to look at either Korsar or Arnem again, quickly recrosses the walkway and ascends to his dais. Moving to its most distant point and throwing himself upon the sofa, he calls, “Baster-kin!” in a tone authoritative enough to make the strong-willed Merchant Lord turn about like a household servant. Then the Layzin orders the scribe who sits opposite him to stop recording what is said: an ominous act, and one Arnem has never before observed.
Starting toward the walkway, Baster-kin pauses to glare at the two commanders, whispering only, “I assured him, earlier, that this was not a possibility. You two had better prepare some explanation!” And then he spins again, so quickly that both commanders are brushed by the swirling hem of his cloak, just before he marches up the walkway to face his much-displeased master.
Turning to Yantek Korsar, Arnem finds, for the first time, uncertainty in his old friend’s face; but it is an uncertainty that gives way to private amusement (remarkably ill-timed, Arnem thinks), and Korsar sighs an almost hateful laugh as he quietly pronounces:
“Clever. Yes, clever—my lord …”
Arnem would have an explanation, and will press Korsar for one, if he must; but just then there is a commotion to the rear of the chamber. The men of Baster-kin’s Guard are assuring someone that entry is forbidden—but whoever is on the other side is having none of this explanation.
“Linnet!” Baster-kin calls out from the dais, where he has gone into close conference with the Layzin. “What’s that unholy noise?”
The linnet of the Guard strides quickly to the center of the chamber. “A soldier, sir—a mere pallin, from Sentek Arnem’s command. He claims that he has an urgent report, which the sentek himself ordered him to bring.”
“Did you so command?” Baster-kin calls to Arnem.
“Ban-chindo,” the sentek mumbles; then, as calmly as he can manage, he replies, “Yes, my lord, I did. The pallin has been watching the area of the Wood in which we earlier observed activity.”
“Well—see what he wants,” Baster-kin says, and resumes his hushed conversation with the Layzin, a heated exchange that is evidently doing nothing for the Merchant Lord’s infamous disposition.
In truth, Arnem would rather stay where he is, and use the moment to privately demand that Yantek Korsar explain his extraordinary behavior and statements; but all Korsar seems willing to offer is an additional order:
“You heard him, Sixt—go see what troubles your pallin.”
Left without alternatives, Arnem tries to make his concern plain on his face, and puts his fist to his chest in salute to his commander; but Korsar only smiles again, that infuriating expression that is almost wholly hidden by his beard, and so Arnem must stride to the arched doorway in as bad a humor as he can remember experiencing. He moves roughly past the men of the Guard, and drags the winded Pallin Banchindo out into the transept of the Temple.
“I trust this is urgent indeed, Ban-chindo,” he says. “What have you seen—more movement?”
“No, Sentek Arnem,” the young man replies: “Yet another fire!”
The word drives all other worries from Arnem’s mind, for an instant. “Fire? What do you mean, Pallin? Be specific, damn it all!”
“I am trying, Sentek,” Ban-chindo says, only now getting the heaving of his broad chest under control. “But it has been a long run!”
“You wait until you have four or five Bane fighters anxious to take your head,” Arnem scolds. “You’ll remember running the Celestial Way as an amusing bit of exercise—now, explain.”
“We thought it the light of more torches, at first,” replies Ban-chindo, doing his best to be soldierly and detached. “But it is much deeper in the Wood, and far larger. Flames as high as any tree! Linnet Niksar ordered me to tell you that he thinks it a signal beacon, or evidence of a large encampment.”
Arnem takes a few moments with this news, pacing the transept. “And Linnet Niksar’s opinion can be trusted …” he murmurs. “But that’s all you bring?”
“Well, Sentek, you did say that if we observed anything else—”
“Yes, yes. Fine. Well done, Pallin. Now, back you go. Tell Linnet Niksar that I want the khotor of the Talons ready to march by dawn. The full khotor, mind you, with cavalry ready to ride—both profilic and freilic units. Understood?”
Once again, Ban-chindo slaps his spear to his side as he stands to attention and smiles. “Yes, Sentek! And may I—”
“You may do nothing else,” Arnem replies, knowing that the young man simply wants to express gratitude for the trust his commander has placed in him, but also knowing that there is no time. “Go, go! And keep your mind on those Bane gutting blades!”
Setting off at a run once more, and lowering his spear in the manner instilled by countless hours of drill—so that it hangs level to the ground at his side, ready either to form part of a bristling front line or to be thrown from farther back in the khotor’s formation—Pallin Ban-chindo is soon out the brass doors of the Temple. Arnem, however, is no longer in a similar hurry: he has realized that all he will hear inside the Sacristy are more bizarre statements and angry recriminations, and, for a moment, he indulges the childish belief that if he does not enter, none of it will happen …
But the moment is fleeting; and he soon hears the linnet of the Guard calling out, to say that the Layzin and Baster-kin await his return.
The Bane foragers, journeying homeward, encounter horror compounded by Outrage …
KEERA CANNOT SAY how long she has been running; but when she realizes that her brother and Heldo-Bah have finally sated their appetite for argument, she supposes that it must have been a considerable time. Heldo-Bah still leads, having chosen the most direct, if not the safest, route home to Okot: along the Cat’s Paw. They turn into the deeper Wood only when the river does, and then will move south by east, atop the more shielded (and thus more dangerous) stretch of the river. Finally, they will say farewell to the waterway, and prepare to follow an ancient trail due south. Like a handful of similar routes in other parts of the Wood, this trail was marked by the earliest exiles with ancient Moon worshipper symbols, carved glyphs upon rocks that no longer hold meaning for anyone outside the Bane, and for precious few members of that tribe. But the symbols’ loss of significance has not diminished their quality of encouragement: for Bane returning from missions, the markings remain welcome indications that they will soon be among the smaller settlements that surround Okot, and, not long thereafter, amid the bustle of the central Bane community itself.
The final, writhing turn of the Cat’s Paw to the east has long been infamous for its series of especially violent waterfalls, the noisiest cascades in an already loquacious and often lethal river. Generations ago, Bane foragers, in a moment of typically grim humor, named these falls the Ayerzess-werten, in acknowledgment of all those in their tribe who, dashing too carelessly through the Wood, had slipped and plummeted to their deaths in the narrow, well-hidden gorge. Keera’s party are too expert to be tricked by any of the Ayerzess-werten’s ploys, although they pay them healthy respect: when Heldo-Bah reaches the deceptively beautiful spot where flat granite and gneiss formations jut out over the tiers of falling water, he carefully creeps to the slippery, moss-covered edge of the most dangerous precipice, then returns to mark the limit of safe ground for his companions with a rag of rough white wool that he ties to the lowest limb of a nearby silver birch. This important task completed, Heldo-Bah begins to look for the faded marks of the trail that will make up the final stage of the foragers’ race to discover what vexes their people so severely that they have sounded the Voice of the Moon no less than seven times.
When Keera reaches the Ayerzess-werten, she looks up through the break in the Wood’s leafy ceiling above the falls, at the position of the Moon and stars. She realizes that Heldo-Bah has set a far better pace than she had supposed: the tribulations of the heart, like those of the body, can make a lowly fool of that seeming master we call Time. Keera speculates that
she and her companions should reach Okot by dawn—and yet, for the tracker who is above all a wife and mother, there is only additional dread in this seemingly reassuring consideration: for if Heldo-Bah were as certain as he claims to be that no great evil has befallen Okot, he would hardly have been likely to set and sustain such a rigorous pace over the most dangerous stretches of the Cat’s Paw—particularly after having stuffed his belly with beef.
Despite her mounting anxiety, Keera herself soon halts the party’s progress: for, carried on a gust of wind from the southeast is the scent of humans—filthy humans, to judge by what is more stench than scent. No foragers would travel so carelessly, nor would any other Bane familiar with Davon Wood; and so, without a word, Keera reluctantly stops just short of the area marked by Heldo-Bah’s warning rag, and signals to Veloc. Veloc, recognizing in his sister’s expression that strangers are approaching, calls as quietly as he can after Heldo-Bah, who has wandered some fifty paces from the river in search of the southern trail. But in the region of the Ayerzess-werten, fifty paces might as well be five hundred: Veloc’s voice, even were he to bellow, would scarce rise above the sound of the waters. And so, with expert movements, he produces a leather sling from inside his tunic and reaches down, picking up the first acorn-sized stone he can locate. He flings the stone in Heldo-Bah’s direction, intending, he tells his sister, to strike a tree in front of his friend. But Veloc misses his mark (or does he?) and the stone catches Heldo-Bah on the rump, drawing from him a single sharp cry of pain, and then, to judge by the contortions of his face, more variations on his formidable store of angry oaths. Heldo-Bah is yet close enough to the Ayerzess-werten for his voice, like Veloc’s, to be swallowed up by the din of the river; and so his tirade poses scant danger of revealing the foragers’ presence. He returns to his comrades, still mumbling curses as he prepares for a new battle of name-calling.
But rage becomes consternation when he finds his friends busily concealing their sacks and then their bodies within a series of crevices and caves that cut through a massive crag a short way upriver from the most treacherous ledges surmounting the Ayerzess-werten: ever cautious, Keera has so arranged matters that whoever is approaching from the southeast will have to cross those same dangerous spots before reaching the foragers. Heldo-Bah slackens the straps of his bag, which he sets on the crag.
“What in the name of Kafra’s golden anus has got into you two?” he seethes.
Keera claps one of her strong hands over Heldo-Bah’s mouth, and relates with a mere look the urgency of silence—an order that might seem superfluous, near the Ayerzess-werten, save that Keera is so deeply fretful. Veloc, for his part, tries to convey that men are approaching, with admittedly peculiar movements of his hands: the sole result is that Heldo-Bah’s brow dances in bewilderment. Only when Keera puts her mouth tight to one of her blockheaded friend’s malodorous ears and whispers, “Men come this way—from the south—not Bane,” does Heldo-Bah grow silent and begin, with the alacrity he reserves for moments of unidentified danger, to search the crag for an especially deep crevice of his own, which he finds some twenty feet above the spot chosen by Veloc and Keera. He scouts the maw-like opening for obvious signs of animal habitation, and, finding none, stuffs his sack into the moist dankness below, and then wedges his body in tight above his goods, ever cautious to crush nothing of value. Finally, he produces all of his marauder knives, as well as his gutting blade, and steadies himself for the fight that they all sense may be coming.
Soon, Keera can make out more than mere scents: voices are distinct, even against the noise of the Ayerzess-werten. But they are not martial voices, or at least Keera does not believe they can be—no soldiers, not even the sometimes arrogant young legionaries of Broken, would be so foolish as to allow the cacophonous blare of their calls and acknowledgments to resonate among the stands of especially giant and agèd trees that mark the line where the rich soil of the Wood gives way to the rock formations of the Ayerzess-werten. There is always the possibility that those who approach are trolls, goblins, or even giants, and that they speak without care because they fear neither humans nor panthers; but why would such beings give off so human a stench?
Keera takes some little comfort when she turns to see that Veloc has laid a series of arrows along the ridge of the crevice in which they have hidden, that he may snatch and loose them all the faster in the event of an attack, and that he already has his bow in hand: for every echoing voice out among the trees makes this prospect of a desperate struggle against some unknown group seem steadily more inevitable. Yet, in the midst of the foragers’ preparations, another puzzle emerges: the mix of sounds takes on a different quality, losing its loudest male voices altogether. In the wake of this change, a new sound makes its way to the crag, one that is wholly unexpected by any of the foragers:
“Weeping,” Keera whispers, and Veloc, emboldened, moves higher up to join Heldo-Bah in trying to steal a glimpse of what comes.
Seeing nothing, Veloc hisses down to his sister, “Who weeps?”
“A child,” Keera answers, tilting her head to the southeast and cupping a hand around one ear. “A woman, as well.”
“Ho!” Heldo-Bah noises, pointing. “Look to those beeches!”
And, indeed, from a stand of beech trees, the bush-like branches of which swarm with bright spring leaves, the careless newcomers emerge; but they are neither of the Tall, nor any race of woodland creatures. They are, in fact, Bane, but Bane who observe none of the tribe’s ordinary precautions for forest roving; Bane who seem to care no more for the threats that may lurk in the Wood or the rocky riverbank than they do for the dangers of the Cat’s Paw itself.
More surprising still, given their noisiness, is that they number but four—and one of these is a bawling infant, while two of the remaining three are women. The younger woman wears a well-shaped gown that, to Keera’s eye, hangs as though it has silk in its weave; while the second woman, although agèd, is covered from head to ankle in an outer gown that also hangs softly; and the blanket in which the younger woman has wrapped the infant is no mean sheet, either. These are all signs that the wanderers are not destitute Bane, by any means; yet agonies of the body and spirit care nothing for rank, and the younger woman is so beside herself with torment that Keera worries she may somehow harm the child. The gestures the four employ when speaking and noising to each other allow Keera to conclude that the women and babe are of the same family, of which the man (perhaps a successful craftsman) is almost certainly head: but the pallor of their drawn faces and the stiff movements of their bodies speak of shared troubles having naught to do with mere age. Instead, all three of the adults display signs of severe illness, and from time to time each joins the infant in openly crying out in pain and despair.
Indeed, it would not surprise any of the foragers to see blood on the wanderers’ clothing, for they behave as if they might be wounded. Perhaps, thinks Keera, they were set upon by those men whose voices are no longer part of the moaning chorus. Yet there is no evidence of any such misfortune. Worst of all, they are making directly for the sharpest precipice overlooking the Ayerzess-werten, and seem to take no interest at all in Heldo-Bah’s plainly visible warning rag.
Keera, her own vexed mother’s heart straining, can no longer contain herself: “Stop!” she shouts, believing that the newcomers must be blind, lost, or simple, and are therefore unaware that they are stumbling directly toward dangers that every healthy Bane knows are among the worst in the Wood. Her warning has no effect, however, either because her voice is consumed by the roar of the falls, or because the family chooses to take no note of it. But Keera will not be deterred; and, before Heldo-Bah or Veloc can scramble down to stop her, the tracker is out of the lower crevice as if hurtled, standing in plain view and again shouting, “No! The river!”
The members of the family on the rocky ledge still do not hear her, causing Keera to begin running toward them. She has only managed some ten paces before being stopped by the strangest of
the family’s behaviors: the man, his movements awkward and painful, approaches the young woman and the infant, and places his hands on the child, as if to take it. The hysterical woman then releases the most shrill of all her cries of pain and lets go of the child, after which she collapses onto the slippery moss. Keera continues forward, but more slowly, now that the man has removed the babe from any harm that its mother might have inflicted in her madness. The older woman attempts to comfort the writhing tangle of hair and silken broadcloth on the ground; yet she cannot even kneel, so painful are her own movements. Despite their distress, the man ignores them both, staring down at the infant in his arms with what seems an expression of deep, fatherly love. But there is something else in the expression: some part of what Keera has taken for love soon reveals itself to be an obsession that drives the man, slowly yet relentlessly, toward the farthest point on the ledge above the Ayerzesswerten.
Two realizations rob Keera of breath: first, she sees that she has been wrong, terribly wrong, to think the mother the greatest danger to the infant; and second, she comprehends that the father’s apparent love for the child has been perverted into something else; something not directed toward saving the babe, at all …
“No!” Keera cries with every bit of her exhausted heart; but, protest as she may, the man, now amid the cloudy spray sent up by the Ayerzesswerten, never halts his slow advance to the fatal precipice. And as he goes, he begins to raise the child up gently, holding it as far out as the excruciating pain afflicting his body will permit.
Keera realizes that, quick as she may be, she cannot move quickly enough to subdue the man—particularly as she must approach him over wet, mossy rocks that only become more difficult and dangerous, the faster one tries to cross them. And so, perceiving no other choice, she spins about and signals to her brother in wild-eyed dismay.