In the heat of summer, raiding parties of ChaMeech rarely travelled any distance from the Rift, but still Warkannan kept a careful watch as they rode. Thanks to the Tribes, the big predatory saurs – the longtooths, the slashers, the grey giants – who once had ruled the plains were scarce these days, at least in the Tribal lands, a huge area from the northern headwaters of the river system south to the seacoast.
‘You never know, though,’ Warkannan told Tareev and Arkazo, ‘when you’ll run across one of the meat-eaters. The Tribes haven’t wiped them out by any means.’
‘They can be scared off,’ Soutan put in. ‘It takes several men to do it, but shrieking and clashing sabres together gives the saurs something to think about. They’ve learned they can find easier meals than H’mai.’
‘Good,’ Arkazo said. ‘But I wouldn’t mind seeing one.’
‘From a distance, I wouldn’t either,’ Soutan said. ‘The greater the distance, the better the view.’
They did regularly see the six-legged grassars, the herds of grazing saurs who provided meat to the Tribes and the predators both. The females stood about four feet high at the shoulder, the males as much as six, and where the bright red female heads were slender, the piebald males had broad skulls crowned with three long horns. Both sexes had thick pebbled hides and long tails ending in a spike of bone. Whenever they smelled the horsemen, the males would raise their massive heads, snort a warning, and slam their tails against the earth. In answer the females shrieked to call their young hatchlings back to the safety of the herd.
Warkannan would always halt his little caravan and let the grassars lumber away. Despite their solid size, their six legs gave them a surprising agility; they could begin a turn on the forelegs, stabi-lize on the middle pair, and swing the hind legs around to follow while the spike on their tails slashed any predator close behind them.
‘How do the Tribes kill them, anyway?’ Tareev asked.
‘With arrows and spears,’ Warkannan said. ‘They weaken them with arrows, then move in with the spears for the final kill.’
Tareev rose in his stirrups to watch the herd trotting off. He was grinning as he sat back down. ‘I’d love to join one of those hunts,’ he said. ‘Kaz, are you game?’
‘You bet,’ Arkazo said. ‘If we find a tribe that’ll let us ride along.’
‘The point of this trip,’ Warkannan broke in, ‘is to reach Jezro safely and get him home the same way. Charging around hunting saurs isn’t in the itinerary, gentlemen.’
‘Yes sir,’ Tareev said with a martyred sigh. ‘The way we’re going, we might not ever see any Tribesmen anyway.’
‘Oh we will,’ Soutan said. ‘I’m keeping a good look out. We need information.’
Every time they stopped to rest the horses or to camp, Soutan took a strangely-wrapped object from his saddlebags and walked off alone to stare into it. When one morning Warkannan asked about it, Soutan unwrapped the silk pieces to reveal a polished sphere of heavy glass, engraved with numbers and strange marks around its equator.
‘It’s a scanning crystal,’ Soutan said.
‘What do you see in it?’ Arkazo said, grinning. ‘Spirits and demons?’
Tareev snickered.
‘That’s enough, gentlemen,’ Warkannan snapped.
‘Thank you, Captain.’ Soutan looked the two young men over, then shrugged. ‘I see your university didn’t teach you good manners.’ With that he stalked off into the grass.
Warkannan turned to Arkazo and Tareev. ‘Front and centre, you two,’ he growled. ‘Soutan believes in his damned sorcery. We need his help. Hell, without him, we’ll get nowhere. I want you two to treat this magic business with every show of respect. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes sir,’ Tareev said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It just goes against the grain, somehow,’ Arkazo muttered. ‘But of course, sir. Whatever you say.’
When Soutan returned, Tareev and Arkazo apologized.
‘Accepted,’ Soutan said. ‘By the way, there’s a comnee some ten miles ahead of us.’
‘You’re sure?’ Arkazo said.
‘If I hadn’t been sure, you young lout, I would never have mentioned it.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just hard to believe that bit of glass is magic.’
Warkannan started to intervene, but Soutan smiled.
‘Why?’ the sorcerer said.
‘Because of the engraved numbers, I think,’ Arkazo said. ‘It makes it look like a tool or something.’
‘Very good! It does, yes. Think about that.’
Soutan walked over to his saddlebags and knelt down to put the crystal away. Tareev leaned close to Arkazo and muttered, ‘Huh! We’ll just see if this comnee ever shows up.’ If Soutan heard, he never responded.
All three Kazraks were in for a surprise when, after some hours of riding, they saw the comnee right where Soutan had said it would be. Warkannan and his men saw the horses first, and only then the sprawl of tents along a stream. Against the brightly coloured trees and the wild grass, the tents, so gaudy in themselves, blended in so well they almost disappeared. The comnee insisted that they eat the evening meal with them and brought out skins of keese to drink with the guests. When Warkannan asked his carefully prepared questions, he found that several of the men had indeed heard of a Kazrak exile who rode with a comnee. Somewhere to the south, they told Warkannan, and a spirit rider was the one who took him in. When Warkannan and his men were ready to ride out the following morning, Warkannan gifted their hosts with a sack of grain and received warm thanks in return.
‘No, no, I should be thanking you,’ Warkannan said. ‘For your company.’
And for your information, Warkannan thought. And yet, as they rode away, he felt heavy-hearted, to be hunting a man down like a saur. He’s one of the Chosen, he reminded himself. They’re more vicious than any beast alive.
In summer every comnee travelled to the Great River, which flowed, wide but shallow, from the north through the heart of the Tribal lands all the way to the distant southern sea. Apanador’s comnee arrived in the middle of a sunny day. Once the tents were set up and every scrap of fuel in the area scrounged and set drying, the men put out snares for small game. Along the riverbanks grew fern trees, spear trees, brushy shrubs, and mosses in a riot of orange fronds and yellow threads. In this thick vegetation lived the turquoise chirpers, the purple and grey spotted snappers, red-boys, and a dozen other kinds of meaty reptiles. They’d supply meat until the grassars came to the river to drink.
Ammadin had never thought of Kazraks as hunters, but Zayn had brought with him a perfect weapon for snaring tree lizards – three brass balls connected with leather thongs. Down by the river she saw him stalking a redboy. It scrambled up a fern tree, then made the mistake of shimmying out onto a frond, where it stood squawking on its six skinny legs. Zayn swung the balls around his head and made them sing like a giant insect, then let them fly from his open hand. The balls wrapped the cords around two pairs of the redboy’s legs and dragged it writhing from the tree. Zayn scooped it up with both hands and snapped its neck.
‘That’s amazing,’ Ammadin said. ‘You’ve got a good eye.’
‘For this kind of thing, maybe. I hope I can do as well with comnee weapons and bigger game.’
Handling a spear came to him easily, because he knew the lance from his time in the cavalry, but the bow was another matter. In the morning Ammadin rode out to watch him practise with the short bow, made of layers of horn and wood. Dallador had stuffed an old saurskin with grass and set it up as a target. Ammadin sat on her horse and watched as Zayn galloped by, guiding the horse with his knees and nocking an arrow into the bow. Zayn twisted easily in the saddle and shot three fast arrows next to, above, and beyond the target. With a whoop of laughter, he turned his horse and trotted back to Dallador. When he dismounted, Ammadin joined them.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the way you ride,’ Dallador said. ‘But you’re going to have to practise shooting dismounted
for a while. You know, one step at a time.’
‘All right,’ Zayn said. ‘At home we hunt with a longer bow, and you hold it vertically, not across your body like this.’
On the morrow, the men rode out early. The women began their part of the food work: milking their mares, churning butter, setting yogurt to cure and keese to ferment. Ammadin saddled her grey gelding and rode out alone in the opposite direction from the men. Spirit rider or not, a woman would bring bad luck to the men’s hunt if she tagged along. She ambled south until she found, some miles from camp, a place where a shallow stream joined the river. She watered her horse, then tethered it out to graze.
On foot she pushed her way through the tangle of trees and ferns to the riverbank, where yellabuhs swarmed. Now and then a slender brown fish would leap open-mouthed from the water and scoop some of them up before falling back. The survivors would fly madly around for a few moments, then resume their swarm, only to fall prey to the next leaper. Ammadin knelt down and peered into the water to look for spirit pearls. Sure enough, they lay thick among the orange mosses and the red-brown river weeds, but it seemed to her that there were fewer this year than she was used to seeing in the Great River.
She sat on the bank and for a long while watched the pearls. Most lay inert on the river bottom; then suddenly and inexplicably one would float free and catch the current, only to sink again farther downstream. As she watched, most of the clutch jerked itself into the current and floated out of sight. Two, however, never moved, and they seemed wrinkled as well. Could they be dead? If so, there’d be no harm in her taking one out of the water, would there? She got up and considered the underbrush around her. Nearby she found a poker tree, so-called because its skinny orange branches stuck straight out from its fleshy squat trunk. She cut off a pair, then stuck them into the mossy bank next to the shrivelled pearls as a marker. If they hadn’t moved on by morning, she promised herself, she would consider examining one.
When Ammadin returned to camp, she found the men back already; they’d had splendid luck and surprised a herd of grassars as it left a stream. Out behind the tents they hunkered down to skin and clean the two kills, both of them fat from the summer forage and a good seven feet long from nose to the base of the tail. The children clustered round to watch with eager eyes for the fresh-roasted dinner ahead of them. Three of the men had already skinned one saur and were butchering the meat with their long knives.
Off to one side Zayn was kneeling beside a three-horned male with a skinning knife in his hand. Orador was standing over him and telling him how to separate the red-and-purple striped hide from its previous owner. Ammadin strolled over to join them.
‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘Did Zayn make his first kill?’
‘More or less,’ Orador said, smiling. ‘Someone else’s arrows crip-pled it – Grenidor, I think it was – but Zayn’s the one whose spear finished it off. Took some doing, too, so we awarded the kill to him.’
Zayn looked up, and she noticed the left side of his face, swollen maroon and purple around a bruise in the shape of a grassar hoof.
‘His first kill is an important point in a man’s life.’ Ammadin dabbled her forefinger in the bull’s dark blood and marked a cross on Zayn’s forehead. ‘You’ve brought home food for the comnee. The gods will honour you.’
‘Thank you.’ Zayn ducked his head in acknowledgment. ‘The Wise One honours me as well, and I’m pleased I could help feed us all.’
He’d answered as nicely as any comnee boy. Ammadin suddenly wondered just how and why he knew so much about Tribal ways.
While Orador taught him how to draw the carcass, Ammadin hung around and watched. Zayn was starting to attract her, with his exotic Kazrak features and lean well-muscled body. Years before, she’d taken a few casual lovers, just as any girl of the Tribes would do, but she’d always found them irritating after the first few nights. They followed her around, they got in the way of her spirit journeys, they begged her to marry them, they wanted sons. Dallador had been different, but she’d felt that having sex with him was like eating a good meal – fine while it lasted, but ultimately meaningless. He was so sensual that he could attract anyone, but when it came to keeping them, Maradin was the only person who’d ever really loved him. Ammadin only hoped that Dallo knew it.
Zayn, on the other hand: the easy set of his shoulders, the slow way he smiled, the sense of privacy, the reserve in his dark eyes – they intrigued her. She had to remind herself that he’d only be a nuisance during the day. As if he were aware of her study, Zayn looked up and smiled at her.
‘Do you want these horns? I’ve noticed that you people use them for all sorts of things.’
Orador laughed, a little whoop of mockery that made Zayn blush. So. Here was one bit of Tribal lore the Kazrak didn’t know.
‘I don’t think you understand what you’re offering,’ Ammadin said. ‘A man gives a woman the horns of his kill after she asks him to marry her.’
Zayn sat back on his heels and looked at her in pleasant speculation, as if he wouldn’t mind receiving such a proposal. Orador made a great show of cleaning his skinning knife on the grass. Ammadin turned and strode away, annoyed with herself far more than with Zayn for allowing this embarrassment to develop. He was only a man, after all, and men were always angling for a good marriage and the horses it would bring them.
That night the camp feasted. The men dug a pit and used some of the charcoal bought on the border to roast half of Zayn’s bull grassar. All afternoon the comnee smelled it baking, and by the time it was finished, a hungry crowd milled around the pit. In the gathering twilight the men hauled the meat up and laid it on the tailgate of a wagon. With his long knife Apanador set about cutting it up; the slow-roasted meat fell apart into rich brown chunks. He fed Ammadin first, then the other women, then the children, and finally the men. The keese flowed as everyone sat down in the grass to eat. Zayn brought his share over to Ammadin and sat down next to her. They were just finishing when Apanador and Dallador joined them, hunkering down in the grass.
‘Your servant’s going to be a good hunter, Holy One,’ Apanador said. ‘He can stay on a horse like a comnee man, too. It’s time for him to think about the future. I’ll offer him a place in the comnee if you agree.’
Zayn caught his breath.
‘What do you say, Zayn?’ Apanador said. ‘Do you want to return to your khanate and live as a shamed man?’
Zayn hesitated, thinking hard. ‘I’d rather ride with you,’ he said at last. ‘If you truly think I’m worthy.’
Apanador looked at Ammadin for her opinion.
‘You’re welcome to stay,’ she said to Zayn. ‘But only if you’re willing to become a man. I know you’re a man among your people, but to us, you’re still a boy. You haven’t gone on your vision quest and learned your true name.’
‘I’ve heard about that. Will the Spirit Rider tell me what to do?’
‘Of course. It’s one of my duties.’ She glanced at Apanador. ‘I’ll consult the spirits and find an auspicious day.’
‘Good,’ Apanador said. ‘Then we’ll head to the Mistlands when we break camp.’ He turned back to Zayn. ‘Our boys go to the Mistlands for their vision quests. Do you know about them?’
‘Every officer on the border has heard of them, but I’ve never had a chance to see them.’
‘You’re going to now,’ Ammadin said. ‘Boys vigil there in the summer.’
‘What about the girls?’
‘Girls quest in the winter, down in the swamp-forests by the ocean.’
‘That’s interesting. May I ask why there’s a difference? Did the gods –’
‘No.’ Ammadin paused for a smile. ‘It’s just not safe to go into the Mistlands in the winter. The lakes are swarming with ChaMeech then. They must come from all over.’
‘Why?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea. Maybe they send their children on vigils, too.’
‘You can talk later,’ Apanador bro
ke in. ‘Let’s put this matter to the comnee.’
Near the smothered fire-pit Apanador gathered the comnee together and put forward his proposal. Every adult had the right to speak out, either for or against allowing Zayn into the comnee; the majority vote would decide. One at a time, everyone agreed to allow him in, until Apanador turned to Palindor. Ammadin was far from surprised when Palindor spat out a futile no.
‘And what do you have against Zayn?’ Apanador said.
‘He’s a Kazrak. Isn’t that enough?’
‘No, it isn’t. He’s a Kazrak smart enough to leave his bizarre khanate and come to us.’
When the rest of the comnee laughed, Palindor rested his hand on the hilt of his long knife. ‘He’s also a man who offended the great chiefs of his country. He broke his own laws. Who’s to say that he won’t do the same to ours someday?’ Palindor looked around, appealing to the crowd. ‘Do you really want to ride with a man who’d lie to a chief?’
‘I never lied.’ Zayn stepped forward. ‘He never even asked me if I was sleeping with his wife, and by God Himself, if he had, I would have told him to his face. She was that beautiful.’
When this drew a good laugh, Palindor’s hand went tight on his knife’s hilt.
‘Palindor, the comnee’s already agreed,’ Apanador said. ‘If someday Zayn betrays us, well, then, you’ll have the wonderful satisfaction of saying I-told-you-so to all of us. You’ll have to be content with that.’
‘And if I’m not?’ Palindor snapped.
Some of the women gasped.
‘Then you’ll have to go back to your mother’s comnee,’ Apanador said. ‘Maybe your sister will let you guard her horses.’
Blushing a furious scarlet, Palindor strode off into the darkness. When Dallador started after him, Apanador caught his arm.