Godbond (10 page)

“Tyee,” I urged.

He looked at the ground, and the moonshadows flickered on his face. “Folk say the Herders have wisdom,” he told me finally. The saying was a gift he gave me against his will, and I touched his hand in thanks.

In the early morning, before many folk were about to protest, I left the Red Hart yet again, bound toward the Herder village beyond the thunder cones. The last one of my people I saw was Karu, standing in the meadow mists, plucking the petals from a starflower. She gave me a single glance as I rode by, and I knew without hearing them the timeworn words that she chanted.

Pluck me one, pluck me two
.

Will you love me if I love you?

Pluck me two, pluck me three
.

Sakeema, please come back to me
.

Chapter Seven

It was not Talu I rode. I had left her behind to rest and fatten herself upon the fish offal my people threw daily on their midden heaps. She could not have much longer survived the journey with little on which to feed her ugly bulk but grubs and lizards and sometimes snakes. Fanged monstrosity, she had not even raised her bony head from her greedy feeding to watch me go. Scant gratitude in her, and I felt sure I had saved her life—for a time—by leaving her.

I rode a curly-haired pony, Tyee's gift. A stallion, dun of color, as were all horses I knew except Tassida's Calimir, and blue-eyed, as were the pride of my people's horses, and tough enough to travel far, even on scant forage. But like all such grass-eating ponies it was round, so that I felt as if I were sitting on an overlarge mushroom, and the long spirals of its fur made it feel soft, too soft to suit me now that I was accustomed to Talu's hard, gaunt frame. I admitted to myself that I did not miss her high, jutting withers bruising my groin. The curly-haired stallion was shorter of leg than she, and I hoped I would not miss her warlike stride.

Bound eastward, I traveled more northward than eastward for the time, heading toward the Traders' Trail, which lay on the skirts of the Red Hart Demesne. It would take me around the black barrier of the thunder cones to the dry, vast plains where the Herders gazed their six-horned sheep. It also took me to the reaches of the Steppes where the Fanged Horse raiders roamed, a circumstance that did not much please me. But Pajlat's minions were hosting somewhere westward, to the best of Tyee's knowledge, in order to attack Kor. None of them were likely to be on hand to trouble me.

The curly-haired stallion's name was Muku, “fleet as a deer,” and I found him far less satisfying to talk to than Talu. He had none of her responsive scorn. He walked and loped tamely, just as I told him to, by day, then grazed hungrily through the evenings without looking at me when I spoke to him. He did not stray, or run away and refuse to be caught, or lay back his ears and glare at me, or buck, or resist the headstall, or kick idly when I came near, or do any of the annoying things that Talu did. I missed her.

Traveling at good speed, I passed out of deer meadow and beaver water and hemlock forest into the prairies: open, grassy country with much sky, shallow valleys, soft-crested hills. Once, not long ago, foxes and badgers and blue hens and burrowing squirrels had lived here, and longer ago, in Sakeema's time, the black-tailed deer, and perhaps also the gray and fallow. It was rich, pleasant land. Only because of the Fanged Horse threat did the Herders not stay there, and only because of Red Hart warriors driving them back from the edge of the Demesne did the Fanged Horse Folk not make the prairies their own. And if it were not for Pajlat's raiders the Red Hart might have come there more often. So this goodly land was roamed by everyone and no one.

I grew no less thin as I traveled, for I was living on the redberry and onion and wild carrot in the grass, saving the provision Tyee had given me, wayfarer's food—he had been generous, but it would be little enough to see me through the Steppes. And I was just as glad to build no cooking fires, for I felt exposed on the prairie, treeless but for small thorns and junipers.

Later I had to build fires, when grassland thinned into the Steppes, and use some of my hoarded water for stone-boiling, because biscuit root and dried fish cannot be choked down uncooked except with wickfish oil, and I had none. And I found no forage, not even grubs or toads or snakes under the rocks I lifted, not even grass seeds on the stems. The Traders' Trail, my first sight of it at dusk, was a rocky gully worn across a flat plateau nearly as barren as the trail itself. Short, scant grass and prickly blunderbrush grew on that high plain, and nothing else.

I ate sparingly of my supplies, and saw that they would not last me the journey, and considered that I might starve. But as it turned out, the Fanged Horse Folk did not give me time to starve.

My first day on the Traders' Trail I saw them at a great distance across the flat shadowlands. And they also saw me, for I saw the dust rise as their horses leaped into the gallop, speeding toward me. Perhaps if I had put Muku to the run at once I might have escaped them yet. And Sakeema knows every muscle of me wanted to, for even Cragsmen were less dangerous than Fanged Horse marauders. Cragsmen could sometimes be diverted by talk. The Fanged Horse Folk made a custom of striking before parleying, and they were not known for honor or mercy. But parley with them I must, if I wished to know what their tribe said of Sakeema.

I drew Alar from her sheath and awaited them, the sword's hilt warm in my hand, her pommel stone glowing like a second sun.

They galloped near enough for me to see of them more than their dust. Six of them, their greasy black hair flopping on their shoulders as they rode, and they grinned as they saw my weapon, and let out shrill yells of mockery. They were youngsters, I saw in a sort of disgust, merest puppies. Not one of them had the withered head of an enemy hung from his riding pelt or a tassel made of an enemy's hair swinging under his horse's chin. Indeed they were mere striplings, beardless, the armbands sliding down the flat muscles of their arms, their chests hollow under strings of bison teeth. Pajlat must indeed be hosting all his choice warriors to the westward, if he had sent these cubs to be his patrol on his eastern reaches.

But youngsters though they might be, they were as dangerous as a nest of infant vipers, and I knew it well.

I waited. Under me, Muku waited uneasily.

The enemy bore those vicious weapons I most hated, long whips of heavy bisonhide, fit to take out an eye or stun a man and beat the life out of him. As they rushed toward me they taunted me with yipping laughter and raised the whips, eager to wrap a lash around me. Each pup of them would strive hard to take my head for his own, to wear at his knees, his first victim. They would vie with each other for the trophy.

I waited. Until they had come within a stride of striking I waited. Then, “World brothers,” I hailed them, “where is Sakeema?”

A lash curled around my neck. I steadied Muku with my bearing and did not move, though the sword flared bright in my hand. The blow had been aimed for my face, but the youngster's hand had jerked at my words, I had seen it. The attackers swirled around me, but I did not turn. Then their dust coiled up like a squat serpent as they' brought their horses to a halt in front of me.

“Where is Sakeema?” I asked again into the heartbeat of silence that followed.

They opened their mouths wide and hooted their derision. “We do not speak of Sakeema!” one of them cried, his head flung back so that he yelled up at the sky.

And another shouted at me, “You ask us of Sakeema! You, who killed our tribesmen with your bright knife!” He drew back his lash hand to attack me, but the one who had shouted at sky stopped him with a hand to his forearm.

“Where did you get that strange, long blade?” he asked, not entirely taunting, and looking back at him I saw him with an odd clarity, his small eyes narrowed and bright on me, like a ferret's sharp eyes, or a pine marten's, and his grin—or grimace—his teeth were brown, they must have been causing him some pain.

“Out of black water,” I told him. “Why do you not speak of Sakeema?”

He spat. “Whoreson bastard,” he said, and I did not know if he so named me or the god.

The spittle fell against Muku's curly-haired forehead, and the little horse shook it off, as he did everything, tamely, and the Fanged Horse youngsters laughed. There was no fire in Muku, only a humble obedience. Red Hart ponies are meant for walking sturdily through long journeys, standing quietly while the deer are stalked and shot, hauling the fresh, bloody meat calmly on their backs. Hot temper helps for none of these things, but only wastes strength and makes noise. Small wonder Muku had no such mettle as a fanged mare might, though if I demanded it of him he would die as he had lived: steadily, bravely.

One of the Fanged Horse cublings told me, to mock me, “Our old tales say that Sakeema will return riding a
fanged
steed.”

Under the scorn in his voice I heard the wistfulness I knew well. It was because I had spoken of Sakeema that they had not yet attacked me, say what they would of me or the god. With softened voice I asked, “What else say you of Sakeema?”

“Whoreson!” the one with the aching mouth burst out, and this time I knew he spoke of the god. “We tell the tales no more. Where is the bastard oathbreaker now, when the world is dying?”

“He sleeps,” I said when I should have kept silence. I spoke, and far too quickly, because my own dark doubts were muttering and fingering their whips like the enemies I faced.

“He sleeps no whit!” cried out one of them who had not yet spoken.

And the one who had cursed Sakeema said, “The stable stands empty, it always has. Yet the wise women say he is not dead.”

“No more is he,” I declared, speaking like a fool again when I should have kept silence. “I have been to the Mountains of Doom, and I have spoken with spirits. Sakeema is not in Mahela's realm.”

Five of the six who faced me stared and murmured. But the one with the bitter mouth took no pause. He thrust his jaw toward me, and his eyes glittered marten-hard.

“Better he would be dead,” he said. “For if the god is not dead or asleep, he is awake, and our betrayer.”

And all my own half-formed doubts rose up and lashed my heart. If Sakeema was awake and roaming the world somewhere, why was Mahela having her way with us all? Had the god forsaken us? Was there a devourer in him?

Our betrayer—as my beloved father had betrayed me—

“No!” I roared, a madman's bellow, and kicked Muku hard, so that he leaped forward like a startled hare, blundering into the one with the hurtful mouth. Alar blazed, lifted. Before the youngster knew what was happening, I felled him with a single stroke to the throat.

Life is a twisting dance. These Fanged Horse whelps, they had gone against all their warlike dreaming and training to parley with me, and I, a treacherous outlander, had attacked them. I was their betrayer.

But the combat was now well joined, and I thought no such thoughts at the time. I saw only enemies, and I thirsted for their blood as much as my sword did. I kicked Muku again, pulling at his reins, and he almost toppled, trying to whirl and lunge at the same time. I cursed him and forced him into an unsteady charge. A whip whistled toward my face—Alar cut it off in midair, so that the severed section fell like a snake, writhing. I saw the frightened face of the not-yet-man as he struck at me with the butt, and Alar found her swift way to his heart. Fanged Horse fools, they scorned those who fought with their women at their sides, valiant and well-grown relentless women, yet did not scorn to send their half-grown children into danger! I turned Muku to face another one, aware of the beating of their whips on my back and sides, but not yet feeling pain or weakness—my wrath had taken me out of such feelings. I was crazed with battle fever.

Three more died before Muku slowly sank away under me, his knees folding as he lowered me gently to the ground.

Tough little mount, he had gamely done all I had told him as the fanged mares cut him through his thick fur, so that his neck and chest and flanks ran red with blood, his curly sand-colored hair lay flattened into an ugly fen of blood, until at last a slashing fang had found the large veins of his throat. But he had not fought back by so much as striking with his forehooves.

There he lay on the Steppes, dying, the little stallion my brother had entrusted to me. One enemy yet left to deal with.… Why had Sakeema let Fanged Horse Folk be in the world?

It was as Tyee had said, I decided bitterly. The god was dead. No, worse, as that aching other had recently said: the god was our betrayer.

The thought chilled me worse than the whips had. Standing beside Muku's body, my wrath running out of me like my blood, suddenly feeling all the pain of my wounds, I let Alar sag to my side. I no longer cared if I died there on the spot. If Sakeema was so cruel, it did not matter.

One more Fanged Horse stripling yet faced me.

I stared up at him stupidly, not moving, and he stared down at me from the back of his fanged mare. By all my forebears, but he was ugly, he with his low forehead and the black hair hanging down in oily strings, his sharp nose, his sharpened teeth between lips that never seemed to meet. He still carried his long whip coiled in his right hand, and his mare stamped and pawed in her eagerness to run me down. But he held her on tight rein, and he had not moved, no more than I had, though I could not comprehend the look in his too-small eyes.

“Go away,” I told him thickly. “I no longer feel like killing you.”

He said in his harsh Fanged Horse speech, he who had not spoken to me before, “Who are you?”

Why did they always ask that? And what, for the god's sake, was the right answer? And what did it matter? I laughed, I stood there laughing, for all my life seemed like a joke big as the world. “I am a fool,” I told him, still laughing. “I am Sakeema's fool.”

If he had charged me at that moment I think I would not have raised Alar to cut him down. He could have had my head for his trophy. The world is ending, I seemed to hear Tyee's sardonic voice say, Dannoc no longer eats meat or kills Fanged Horse shitbottoms. The scum.