“Deed and word and…”—Xatatl stumbled for the word for just a moment—“attitude are three different things. Align all three correctly and you will find yourself more comfortable.”
“Lived in the mountains all my life,” Redshanks countered with a breezy shrug. “Comfort, ye say?”
“And you will find that your example will spread to the others now under xoconai rule,” Xatatl said. “Fewer will be punished, or killed.”
Every instinct in the independent frontiersman screamed against that logic and made him want to spit in Xatatl’s red and blue face, but he reminded himself that it wasn’t about him. It was about keeping people alive until they could find some answer to this seemingly impossible turn of events.
He nodded and kept his gaze respectfully to the ground.
“What do you wish to ask of me?” Xatatl asked.
“The dark-skinned woman. She’s a friend of old, and good. I’m asking that ye give to her the belt that allows her her dignity.”
“All magic belongs to Scathmizzane,” came a curt reply.
“Then Scathmizzane must think it good for her to possess such a gift.” Redshanks shuffled nervously as he finished that argument, for when he heard the words, they sounded much worse than he had imagined.
“Look at me,” Xatatl demanded, and Redshanks held his breath.
“You have been of service, but if you ever presume to tell me or any xoconai the will of Scathmizzane again, I will have the skin flayed from you. All of it.”
The man nodded eagerly and apologetically. He didn’t doubt that threat for a moment.
“Is there anything else?” asked Xatatl.
“Could you return her to her friends?” Redshanks dared to ask, the image of poor Khotai in the mud demanding that he try. “Or to others who might care for her?”
“The people of Appleby are concerned with their own tasks. With caring for themselves and serving their masters. They know the consequences of their failure.”
Redshanks didn’t have to look out to the west, to the trellis bending under the weight of the upside down hanging bodies of executed Appleby citizens.
“You are concerned with her dignity,” Xatatl added. “That is laudable. The xoconai understand this. We are a people of honor. So I will help you and your dark-skinned friend.”
The startling words made Redshanks look up into Xatatl’s eyes.
“The woman is of no use to us. She can barely take care of herself, and there are no duties we might add to her that would be of value.”
He waved Redshanks away.
The man stood staring, his jaw dropping open. “Wait, are ye saying…”
Xatatl waved more emphatically, and Redshanks had no choice but to leave, but every step had him glancing back, trying to decipher the dire implications of that promise. What did the augur governor mean? What had he done?
He glanced out to the west, to the bloody pergola, as the people of Appleby had come to call the bloodletting structure.
Redshanks stumbled repeatedly, trying to sort something, anything, that would give him hope. He looked up at the sky, the sun lowering in the west. The xoconai typically held their executions at sunrise or sunset, as those times seemed to hold religious significance to them. Usually, however, unless the action was in response to some event like an escape attempt or an assault on a sidhe, sunrise was preferred.
Redshanks had to hope for that. There was not enough time before sunset.
He hoped.
* * *
“Catriona is out?” Redshanks asked, after feigning a stumble and veering with the load of waterskins to bring him near enough so that only the two men would hear.
“In the south,” Talmadge confirmed.
“This is madness,” said Bahdlahn, who was piling wood nearby.
“Sunrise,” Talmadge replied, and Bahdlahn grimaced and threw a log onto the pile.
“I know,” he answered, and he did indeed. Redshanks had pushed this situation upon them so suddenly. Patience and detailed planning were not options here.
“Take heart,” Redshanks whispered, continuing on his way. “They’ve grown comfortable in thinking that they’ve cowed us all.”
Bahdlahn looked out to the south, through the rows of houses and down the winding lane. They had to try, but if he lost Catriona, he’d never forgive himself. She had taken a great chance, slipping out from the fields where she and some others had been working, so that she could start a distant campfire. It was an incredibly risky move, particularly since she was one of the very few in Appleby with a shaped, elongated skull. If caught, she couldn’t pretend to be a newcomer here.
It was the only way, though. Talmadge and Bahdlahn had spent the day working the woodpile, stuck in the center of town with xoconai all about, and Redshanks had to be available to complete the diversion to have any chance of success—slim though that chance would be, and slimmer still since Xatatl had ordered Khotai to be brought into a tent, under guard, confirming Redshanks’s belief that she would be executed.
“We have to get the belt,” Talmadge whispered between exaggerated grunts, as he hoisted more wood.
“We have to get Khotai,” Bahdlahn said. “And we are only two.”
But Talmadge shook his head. “Not without the belt.”
“We can’no.”
“We have to,” Talmadge said, his tone leaving no room for argument.
The startling words and the clear sincerity behind them hit Bahdlahn profoundly, for he understood that Talmadge had only said such a thing because of his deep love for the woman.
“You get the belt,” Bahdlahn said, the next time his work moved him past Talmadge. “Xatatl won’t be there.”
“We hope.”
Bahdlahn didn’t even bother to respond. The whole thing seemed so hopeless and desperate to him. He thought again of that helpless moment on the ridge atop Fireach Speuer, overlooking the sacrificial ceremony of the Usgar at Craos’a’diad. This seemed no less desperate than his desire then to rush down to the doomed Aoleyn’s aid.
We need more people, he thought but did not say. He knew, though, that help wouldn’t be found among the folk of Appleby. They had already been broken. They outnumbered the remaining xoconai perhaps five to one, but they would never rise up.
Bahdlahn looked to the west. The sun was just about at the horizon now. Already the first calls for the humans to finish their tasks had begun.
It seemed, at least, as if the field masters hadn’t noticed Catriona’s disappearance yet. His gaze went to the south, then nervously back to the west, then back to the south.
The cry of her escape would go out soon.
The fire had to be seen before that!
Daylight began to wane. Bahdlahn’s handler called out to him and Talmadge to be done and to get their evening water.
“Come on,” Bahdlahn whispered, as he and Talmadge made their way to a line before the well.
A cry sounded and the man’s heart sank, thinking it the field master.
But no! Some of the xoconai rushed to a rooftop, all staring out to the south, and moments later, others moved about among the workers, telling them to hurry and get to their cots.
They thought more unsuspecting humans were stumbling in, as Bahdlahn and his three friends had done.
Moving slowly, appearing broken and downtrodden, Bahdlahn and Talmadge neared the small house where they slept with twenty others.
Talmadge nudged Bahdlahn and directed his gaze to a side avenue, where they saw Redshanks astride his horse, trotting out to the south to set the newest trap. The xoconai hunters and riders assembled in the road were plotting their ambush.
“Take heart,” Talmadge whispered, as he and Bahdlahn went into the house. “Look at them. So arrogant.”
“Ximocah!” the lone guard in the house demanded, a word they had painfully learned meant “Silence.”
The response was so instinctive, so sudden and improvised, that Bahdlahn’s fist crashed into the xoconai’s bright red no
se before either Bahdlahn or his victim even realized that the punch was coming.
The warrior’s head jerked back, slamming into the wooden wall, and down he slumped.
“Bahdlahn!” Talmadge said in shock.
Bahdlahn retrieved the tooth-edged paddle and checked to make sure he had not killed the xoconai. He came up with a shrug and tossed the weapon to Talmadge. “Get the belt.”
“There are guards with Khotai,” he replied, handing the weapon back out toward Bahdlahn.
“I don’t need it,” the young and strong man replied. He moved back to the door and cracked it open, then took a deep breath of relief when he discovered that the ambush party had already departed.
The fewer enemies in the city, the better.
Twilight was only then falling, the darkness hardly complete, but Bahdlahn slipped out and moved along the wall, then around the corner. He slipped from building to building quickly, gauging his position, remembering which house they had put the woman into.
He came up to the wall right beside the door and paused, noting Talmadge’s movements across the way as he neared the house that had belonged to Redshanks.
Doubts flew up around him like black wings, telling him to abandon this madness.
Bahdlahn laughed them away as he considered his punch. Too late for second thoughts. He put his ear to the door and heard xoconai voices just inside.
“Don’t tarry,” he whispered, and he stepped out from the wall and over in front of the entry, then burst through, nearly taking the door from its hinges. He noted Khotai immediately, sitting on the floor directly across the way, against the wall.
He only registered her momentarily, though; his focus was on the more immediate problems. He snapped his elbow out the right, crashing it into the face of a woman, who went flying away, then drove it back, landing a heavy right cross on the upraised arm and chest of a man to his left.
He wanted to follow as that man went stumbling backwards, for he knew that he hadn’t knocked that one from the fight, but the third, another woman, came at him, macana raised.
Bahdlahn got his arm up to block but took a heavy hit on the forearm, the weapon’s teeth tearing his sleeve and skin. He fell back a step, but only a step, and an exaggerated one, goading the warrior to follow. Then he reversed his momentum suddenly, barreling ahead as she came forward, the two crashing together in a clench.
Bahdlahn was twice her weight. He drove with his legs, tying her up, forcing her backwards. He let her get her weapon hand free, accepting another hit in exchange for looping his arms out and under hers, that he could lift her right from the ground and drive on harder. Two running strides and Bahdlahn stopped and threw out with all his tremendous strength, and the woman flew the rest of the way, slamming hard into the back wall, shaking the house.
Bahdlahn turned and saw his doom—the man coming in, weapon ready—and had no way to defend.
But the xoconai stumbled suddenly, falling forward, and he swung too soon, short of the mark. Bahdlahn used this good fortune to wade in behind the blow and snap the xoconai’s head to the side with a vicious left hook.
The man went down to the floor in a heap.
But no, it wasn’t merely good fortune, Bahdlahn realized, when he saw Khotai untangling herself from the fallen xoconai’s lower legs.
The unbreakable woman had dived at his feet.
Bahdlahn fell over the xoconai man, yanking one arm back brutally. He grabbed his victim by the long and thick hair on the back of his head, then pulled him up and slammed him down, once, twice, thrice.
When the woman he had thrown into the wall groaned, Bahdlahn leaped up and rushed to her, retrieving her macana.
He raised it for a killing stroke.
He stood up straight and looked around, shaking his head. He didn’t want to kill her, and not only for strategic reasons.
He gathered up a second macana, from the man, then hoisted Khotai in his arms.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“They’re going to kill you in the morning,” he answered.
“And now they’ll kill us all!”
“They have to catch us first!” Out into the deepening gloom went Bahdlahn. He hoisted Khotai over his shoulder, freeing one hand in case any came against him, and ran to the northeast, to the stables.
But he heard pursuit, a commotion behind, and knew without looking that he couldn’t make it.
He growled in protest. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him.
He heard the hoofbeats behind him and knew it was over.
Bahdlahn didn’t dare look back—what was the point?—as the steed overtook him. He expected an explosion of pain as a macana caved in his skull.
But the horse, fully saddled, trotted right by him, slowing to a walk.
Stunned, Bahdlahn slowed and looked back to see a solitary figure standing in the road.
Redshanks smiled at him and waved, then turned awkwardly. He had a javelin stuck in his back, hanging down behind him, the butt end dragging in the dirt. He shrugged, as if apologetically.
Bahdlahn rushed to the horse and placed Khotai over its back, then turned about, determined to rescue the valiant old man.
A second javelin arced in, driving into Redshanks’s side, knocking him to the ground. He wrenched about with great effort, only so that he could wave the foolish would-be hero away.
Not too far behind came a mundunugu rider.
Bahdlahn leaped upon the horse awkwardly and held on for his life as it jumped away. He was no rider. He had no idea of what to do, other than to hold on.
Khotai shoved him back a bit and sat up in the saddle, taking the reins.
She was To-gai-ru, from the tundra lands south of the Belt-and-Buckle. She had been riding horses before she could walk.
“The corral,” Bahdlahn told her, as he tried to better steady himself on the bouncing creature.
“Where is Talmadge?” she demanded.
“Corral! Corral!”
Khotai put her head down and kicked at the horse with her one leg, weaving about the buildings to block any more throws from behind.
How relieved Bahdlahn was when they came upon the corral and found Talmadge there between two horses, holding the reins. The man ran out to meet them, immediately going to Khotai with her magical belt. Bahdlahn slipped down from the horse, staggering as he tried to regain his footing.
“The saddle isn’t tight, but ride anyway,” Talmadge told him, motioning to the one horse he had gathered that was wearing a saddle. “We’ve no time!”
“Ride? I don’t know how.”
“Just jump up and hold on!” Khotai yelled to him.
Bahdlahn got to the horse and went up as bravely as he could manage. He noted, then, that Talmadge had collected more than the belt, for there lay their weapons, even Khotai’s bow and arrows.
“How?” he said, when the man rushed up to the remaining horse.
Talmadge shrugged and smiled. “Xatatl’s house was empty.” He grimaced, apparently noticing the garish wound on Bahdlahn’s arm. “You should have kept the macana.”
Talmadge bent and retrieved the bow and arrows, handing them to Khotai as she guided her horse to them.
“Go!” he ordered Bahdlahn.
“How?”
Talmadge slapped Bahdlahn’s horse on the rump, and the animal leaped away.
Bahdlahn nearly tumbled, but he squeezed his legs and grabbed the reins and the mane, then just hugged the animal’s neck desperately. Truly he felt a fool when Talmadge, riding bareback, came up easily beside him.
“Keep going,” the frontiersman urged. “They can’t catch us.”
Even as he spoke, a javelin flew past, and despite himself, Bahdlahn swung his head about. It took him a moment, more than one, to sort out the scene behind him.
There was Khotai, riding easily, but though her horse was chasing him, the woman wasn’t facing him. She had turned right around, sitting backwards, holding nothing but her bow.
Out went another.
The pursuit broke off, and the three friends rode hard out into the night.
They continued north for just a bit, until Talmadge led them to the left, the west. They weaved among the trees in the forest northwest of Appleby until they came to the banks of a small pond. There they waited patiently, and not as long as they expected, until, to their great relief, Catriona appeared on the southern bank.
Bahdlahn was the first to greet the woman, the two running hard into each other’s arms. Before either appeared to even realize the action, they shared a kiss.
Bahdlahn pulled back, his face flushed with embarrassment.
Catriona snorted at him. “It took you long enough.”
The young man didn’t know what he felt then. He thought of Aoleyn, but only briefly, for the overwhelming sense of freedom consumed him.
They had done it. Somehow they had escaped the xoconai in Appleby.
What now?
“Redshanks,” Bahdlahn said somberly.
“He fell on the road,” Talmadge told Catriona.
“Dead?”
Talmadge shrugged.
“Should we go back for him?” Bahdlahn asked. “For the others? So many.”
“If we go back, we dishonor them—Redshanks most of all,” Khotai answered. “We must be far from this place, to tell the world what we have seen.”
“Many left in Appleby are going to die,” Bahdlahn said. “How can we allow that?”
“How can we stop it?” Khotai and Talmadge said together.
“Many have died already, and many more will,” said Catriona. “More than we can count.”
“Do we not owe it to them to try to rescue them?” Bahdlahn asked.
“We owe it to yourselves to stay alive,” Catriona replied, a bit more sharply. “We owe it to the world that we stay alive and fight them when we can.”
“Then where?” the young man asked.
“The road east is full of sidhe,” said Talmadge.
“They march for the great city of Ursal on the river,” Khotai agreed.
“A river that runs north,” Talmadge said. “So we go north and east until we find it. When Redshanks talked to us about trading with Honce, those years ago, he mentioned other cities, great cities.”
Song of the Risen God Page 26