Exile's Challenge (23 page)

And then his hair was loose and he sat within a lodge preparing the pahé root, his mind filled with a terrible dread, aware that awful danger came against the People, but not from where, or who the enemy might be.…

And then Taza's face filled his vision, laughing.…

And he saw a great army marching out of Salvation, bluecoats and red, with muskets and cannon, and he stood before the column with arms upraised and shouted that the Militiamen must fight for right, not conquest.…

And then another army, Matawaye warriors he knew must
be Chakthi's Tachyn riding horses that were dwarfed by the dread beasts the others rode, which seemed a commingling of creatures, as if lions and lizards merged, their riders clad all in glittering rainbow armor, with skulls strung from their saddles. And Taza laughed at him, and he held a musket and his hair was unbound and he fought.…

The images came swift, imposed on one another, mingling and interweaving until they became a vast conflagration that swept over the plains of Ket-Ta-Thanne and Salvation, and the mountains between shattered and melted. And he stood inside the flames and raised his arms and shouted and rain fell, dousing the fires, and grass grew again and trees, and Morrhyn smiled at him, and Arcole, and a soldier in a blue coat whose face seemed somehow familiar. And soldiers walked with branded folk and Matawaye, all smiling.…

And then an unknown face, sallow and cruel, its owner pointing an accusatory finger, beckoning him to a chain-hung pole around which was piled brushwood. And he was drawn to the pole by a force he could not resist, only stand helpless as the manacles were locked about his wrists and ankles and a torch set to the pyre so that flames rose about his feet and smoke clogged his nostrils and he screamed as the pain began.…

Davyd woke awash with sweat, starting up from the bare earth of the wickiup with a choking cry. Almost, he flung aside the tarpaulin to crawl outside, where the air was clean and not filled with the dream memory of his scorching flesh. But he had no answer yet—as yet he was unsure what the dreams meant, they seemed all confusion and chaos—and so he forced his racing heart to calm and voiced a prayer, and lay back. He was light-headed, and his belly felt like a vacuum, no longer hungry—beyond that—but drawing him inward, into himself, where the answer would be found.…

He saw the armies clash, the soldiers of Evander fighting the People; the weirdlings he knew must be the Breakers fighting the Evanderans, fighting the People; Matawaye fighting Matawaye: chaos. And then the imposition of a kind of order that, even dreaming, unconscious, he knew came from a source beyond himself. The images blurred and realigned, the struggling factions parting and then joining in alliance,
Matawaye and Militiamen siding together against the might of the Breakers and the renegade Tachyn, and he watching as if from on high, anxious to know the outcome.…

Which was not vouchsafed him, for the images faded behind a screen of flame that filled up all the world, and he was running from the conflagration, seeking a safe place he knew existed, but not where or how he should reach it. And suddenly he was pursued: Taza chased him, laughing, and the sallow-faced Evanderan, who held chains and a burning brand, and Matawaye whose faces he did not know, and Breakers in their glittering armor astride their horrid beasts. And he could only run.…

Taza listened to the sounds Davyd made and wondered what the stranger dreamed. Were his shouts a guide, it was nothing pleasant, and that pleased the young Lakanti. Perhaps Davyd would decide the life of a Dreamer was not for him; but Taza doubted that would be, and would sooner not leave that decision to chance, but tip the scales in what he thought must be his favor.

He would not harm Davyd—that should be too risky—but there were other ways to remove the upstart. He thought of the trout he'd stolen and grinned, another idea taking shape. He looked at the two horses grazing peacefully in the noonday sun and made his decision.

Davyd lay panting on the bank of a crystal stream. He could run no farther and knew he must either perish here or find the answer to … He was not sure what. Behind him the fire raged, coursing ever closer; across the stream the grass grew green and safe. He knew that if he waded the shallow water he should be safe, that the fire must halt at that barrier and leave him unscathed. He rose and looked back, and inside the flames he saw Flysse and Arcole, Morrhyn, Rannach and Arrhyna, Lhyn, Colun and Marjia, and knew that if he crossed, they all must perish. He cried out to the Maker, pleading for answers, and felt the heat sear him, his eyes watering, his mouth and nostrils sour with smoke. He fell
gasping onto his hands and knees, head hanging over the water … and saw his face reflected, painted for war even though his hair hung unbound.

Abruptly, a great calm settled on him and he became aware he held things in his hands. He raised his hands, and in his right he saw that he held a hatchet, and in his left pahé root. Not knowing what he did, he brought his hands together, clasping them as if in prayer, and the root and the hatchet blended and became one: a tomahawk fashioned of pahé.…

Davyd opened his eyes. His limbs felt oddly light, unweighted, and when he tried to rise he began to shake and fell back, his head spinning. He groaned, smiling because he had his answer now, and closed his eyes and slept, and this time he did not dream.

He woke again and rolled onto his side. The fire was dead and the wickiup chilly. He was very weak. Laboriously, he crawled to the waterskin and raised it to his lips. It weighed heavy and there was not much water in it, but he drank what there was and struggled to the opening. He pushed the tarpaulin aside and looked out onto a clearing washed by the moon's pale light. He saw an owl watching him from the branch of the oak tree, the great round eyes solemn, and wondered if the bird omened wisdom or death. He took a deep breath and rose to his feet, staggering as the world spun wildly round. The owl took flight, swooping low and ghostly across the clearing, and when Davyd could see clearly again, it was gone. He felt no hunger, only an imponderable emptiness, as if a void existed where his belly had been. He wondered how long he had lain inside the sweat lodge, and knew that he must eat to regain his strength. He felt too weak to mount his buckskin.

On legs that felt both weightless and leaden, he went to where the trout were hung. Thought of the fishes filled his mouth with saliva, and when he reached the branch and saw they were not there, he groaned. He was mistaken, he told himself: light-headed, he became disorientated and had come to the wrong branch. Slowly, he circumnavigated the great
tree, and still the fish were not there. He frowned, examining the branches until he found the cords that had held the fish and saw them cut.

He leant against the oak, wary of sitting for he was not sure he had the strength to rise again, thinking that without food he might well starve before he could reach home. He would need, he thought, to set his snares again, and drop his lines in the stream. He could surely last this one more night without food.

He went to where he'd stowed his gear in the fork of a low-hung branch. The snares and fishlines were there, his bow and all his clothes. Or had been: now they were gone.

For a moment, panic threatened. He could not understand what went on. The fish were perhaps taken by some scavenger more agile than most, but the snares, his clothes? He searched the ground and found no sign, no remnants or wreckage: all was gone.

He wondered if he dreamed still, if this was some extension of his oneiric quest, but he could feel the night air chill on his naked skin, the grass moist under his bare feet, the rough bark of the oak. He could hear the night sounds of the wood, the small noises of the hunters and their prey. Then it dawned on him that he could not hear his horse. Nor could he see it when he looked about. He fought a fresh surge of panic then, for he knew that he could not survive the journey home on foot: without a horse, he must surely starve.

Frightened now, he stumbled across the clearing, desperately hoping that the animal had merely wandered a little farther afield, but he could find it nowhere. Instead, close to the stream, he found the hobble—it had been cut.

For long moments he stared at the severed rawhide, struggling to comprehend. It was almost too strange, too enormous to accept, save the reality forced itself on him. As he had lain dreaming, someone had come to the clearing to steal his horse, his gear, his food; to leave him naked and alone, and—afoot—too far from home that he could hope to reach camp alive.

His mouth was very dry and he went weak-kneed to the stream, dropping on his belly to drink. Thirst slaked, he heaved to a sitting position, the movement setting his head to reeling again. He was afraid and at the same time oddly distanced, as if he observed himself objectively and wondered how he should survive. The waxing moon told him he'd been eight or nine days, perhaps more, in the sweat lodge. The camp was three days' ride away—six for a healthy man on foot to walk. He was unsure how long it might take a hungry man; longer, he thought, than he could endure.

Suddenly he began to laugh at the irony of his predicament. He had come here alone to seek an answer, and dreamed strange dreams of danger all oblivious of his own immediate peril. It should surely be a cynical jest if he were to die here, answered; to starve in Ket-Ta-Thanne after surviving Bantar and the Sea of Sorrows, indenture in Salvation and the dangers of the wilderness. He stifled his laughter as it turned to sobs, and he realized that tears filled his eyes. This was no way for a warrior of the People to act. He gasped, his chest heaving painfully, his belly abruptly reminding him it was empty, and forced himself to ignore discomfort as he assessed his situation.

Morrhyn had survived alone on the Maker's Mountain and come back through the snows to bring his warning to the People. Now Davyd sensed he owned a similar mission. He could not properly interpret his dreams, save for the one clear answer, but he knew he must describe them to Morrhyn, else dreadful threat again come upon the Matawaye. Or was that only vanity born of fear? The Maker had gifted Morrhyn with
certain knowledge, and kept the wakanisha alive that he deliver the People, but would he look so kindly on Davyd?

“The Maker is like a wise father,” Morrhyn had told him. “He guides us and guards us, but he does not indulge us. We should not expect him to pick us up each time we fall, for he'd leave us to take our knocks and learn from them. It is our duty to seek our own solutions before we turn to him and ask him to carry us through the hard times. Do we always run to him asking that he resolve our every difficulty, then we are less than he'd have us be.”

So then, Davyd decided, he could ask the Maker for aid, but must also look to help himself. He rose slowly to his feet, swaying a moment as he shuddered, his limbs trembling as if his blood ran thin and all his muscles vibrated to some internal disharmony. He felt mightily weary, and feared he should fall down. He swallowed, taking deep breaths, willing his shaking body to stillness, and then turned to the four points of the compass as Morrhyn had taught him, intoning a prayer that the Maker grant him life, at least long enough that he be able to describe his dreams to the wakanisha.

Then he set to the fleshly preparations for survival.

First came a fire—the nights were chill in the Moon of the Turning Year, and rain was likely—naked and near starving, he could not survive without warmth. He wished he'd brought his tinderbox, but he had elected to perform the rituals in the traditional manner and lit his fire with dry wood and a fire-stick. Both were now consumed and he must scavenge the clearing before he could find suitable materials to start the blaze again. In time, he found what he sought and carried dry branches and kindling to the entrance of the wickiup. His hands shook as he turned the stick between his palms, and it took several attempts before the drilling sparked the moss in the ancient log. He leant forward, blowing gently, and saw tiny flames rise. He added twigs, adjuring himself to patience, and waited until the kindling took before setting larger pieces in place. Slowly, the fire built, the flames rising stronger, and he set a cone of wood in place, watching as the blaze sent flickering red light across the clearing.

He was tempted then to lie down close by that seductive warmth, and sleep, but he was not sure he'd have the strength
to rise again. So he warmed himself and wondered how he could procure sustenance.

Tekah had shown him how a fish might be caught by hand, tickled from its watery bed were the fisherman skilled enough and swift enough. Davyd had caught a few in this fashion—after frustrating hours and many failed attempts—but now it seemed the likeliest way to gain immediate food. He might build traps, could he find suitable wood and pliant vines, but that should take much longer, and even then hold no promise of success. Fish, he decided, were his best option. He returned to the stream.

The surface was patterned with light and shade, the moon shining down through the overhanging trees so that it was difficult to locate the trout, their camouflaged backs blending with the pebbly streambed as they drifted in their piscine sleep. Catching them was harder still. He could barely quell the trembling that possessed his limbs, and too often that disturbed the water, sending the fish scattering, leaving Davyd moaning with frustration, his arm chilled by the cold immersion. And that chill grew to pervade all his body, so that the shuddering grew worse and he must crawl back to the fire, to warm himself again before his next attempt.

The moon passed across the sky and the light faded into the toneless gray that precedes dawn. The cold grew worse and he must go more frequently to the fire now, chanting prayers that he not succumb to sleep. Delirium threatened, and several times he found himself drifting, his arm submerged and the cold taking hold, sucking out what little energy he had left. Then he would start back—again frightening the fish—and curse himself for a weakling and damn whoever had stolen his gear and horse.