Exile's Children (37 page)

He shrugged apologetically while Marjia laughed and said, “They are fools! Should friends not aid friends in time of trouble? How can that offend the Maker?”

“Still,” Colun said, “some claim that.”

“Should we go?” Rannach asked. “I'd not see you suffer on our behalf.”

“Ach, no!” Colun flung a dismissive hand at the sky. “This valley belongs to the Javitz, and I am creddan of the Javitz. It is other families—envious families—who make these claims.”

“But no other … Javitz? … come,” Arrhyna said.

Colun smiled sheepishly and told her, “I'd not give offense, save I must. The right and wrong of my decision is still debated and no conclusion reached, but meanwhile …”

He shrugged and found his mug. Marjia continued: “My brave husband would see you safe—and does. But he must also consider the welfare of our family, and so would hold all claims of wrongdoing to himself alone. Should the debate decide against him, then he'd not see any other Javitz blamed, but only him.”

“And you?” Arrhyna suggested.

Marjia chuckled then, her round form shaking as if a boulder trembled. “I've no doubt that what he did was right,” she said. “And am I condemned for that, then so be it.”

“What shall happen,” Rannach asked, “if the decision goes against you?”

“Who knows?” Colun replied, and grinned. “No flatlander has ever come here before—it's no easy decision.”

“And so,” Marjia added cheerfully, “will take a long time to decide. The elders will argue back and forth, and you two likely grow old before any minds are made up.”

“Still,” Rannach said, “I'd not bring you to harm. Were it better we go, then we shall.”

Marjia then said, “Hush. We'll not hear such talk. Eh, husband?”

“No. You are our friends: you are guests of the Javitz. I should …” He drew himself up: a stone bristling like an offended dog. “I should take that as insult. Indeed …” He assumed as haughty a mien as might a stone. “… I forbid it; and any further talk of departure.”

Save, Arrhyna thought even as she smiled her thanks—letting her eyes wander briefly to where the Maker's Mountain loomed high under the afternoon sun—that we and you are all forced to depart, fleeing like the Whaztaye before whatever menace lurks beyond these ringing hills.

But she hid that unpleasant thought behind her smile, which was entirely genuine, for she thought she'd never known such staunch friends.

So it went, idyll and menace, the days blending one into another as the moons waxed and waned and waxed again, time turning seemingly unconcerned with the events of men. Sometimes Arrhyna thought of the valley as a refuge, an island in a wide river, buffeted by hard floods but yet impregnable, safe. At others she thought of it as a beautiful prison in which she lay happily trapped, able to ignore the world outside.

And Rannach, she wondered as she studied her husband's face in the light of the Moon of Hairy Horses, what does he feel? What does he not tell me?

She asked again, “What of Colun's news?”

He shrugged and said, “The Maker's wards hold yet, no? So the invaders probe, but the Grannach defenses still hold them back.”

“Colun told us,” she said, “that they move deeper into the hills, that Grannach have died fighting them in the passes and the tunnels.”

“And I,” he returned, “have said I'd fight with the Grannach. And Colun tells me no, that his folk can hold the tunnels and the passes and have no need of me.”

“But,” she said, “what if … ?”

Rannach reached out to take her hand, raising it toward the shape of the holy mountain, now luminous under the moon. “It is in the hands of the Maker,” he said. “His wards shall hold or not. Do they, then such talk as this is pointless. Do they not, then I shall fight.”

“And what,” she asked, “of the People? What of the Grannach?”

“I shall fight,” he said. “I shall do what I can do. But for now I can do nothing save wait. It is in the Maker's hands.”

Morrhyn lay across his horse's neck, a hand clamped over the muzzle, and listened to the hoofbeats drumming through the sun-heated earth. The slope rose gently before him and he prayed to the Maker that the hollow hide him from the Tachyn he had seen, and they had not spotted him.

A band of fifteen or twenty by his swift count, riding hard from the north, their faces all painted for war. He had sighted them as he climbed the slope—too far from the woods behind to risk retreat and nowhere to run save this shallow depression that might, were the Maker kind, conceal him. If not, if they found him, then all was lost, for they would surely slay him, wakanisha or not.

Or fool, he thought not for the first time. Perhaps only a fool on a fool's errand. Perhaps only a dreamless Dreamer riding to his death, one way or the other. Why am I doing this? Why have I left my people behind to go seeking … what?

It was not a thing he could properly explain to himself, and therefore quite impossible to define to others. No dream had summoned him to this quest, he had perceived no sign: there was only that inward certainty. He
knew
he must go; but when that was the only reason he found to give and got back sound arguments for his remaining, he could not help but feel doubt. The Maker sent him no guiding dreams—he could
not claim that imperative—and he sometimes wondered, even as he prepared to leave, if some other agency lured him away, or even if he lost his mind. And, the Maker knew, there were sound enough reasons to stay.

“Chakthi runs loose,” Racharran told him, “and I've not the warriors to spare to bring you safe to the hills.”

Morrhyn had shaken his head at that and smiled sadly. “I'd not ask for an escort, old friend.”

“I doubt,” Racharran had said, “that the Tachyn will respect even a wakanisha now. If they find you, they'll likely kill you.”

And Morrhyn had shrugged and asked, “Shall that matter?”

“Yes!” Racharran had replied, staring fiercely at his friend. “To me and all the clan. We need you.”

“Blind horses travel slow,” Morrhyn had returned, “and need much care. As I am now, I am of no use. Do I go the mountain …”

“If you get to the mountain,” Racharran had said.

“If,” Morrhyn had agreed.

“Then what?” Racharran had turned to gesture westward, a hand sweeping wide in indication of the distance to be traveled. “If you get safely past the Tachyn and climb the mountain. Then what?”

“I don't know.” Morrhyn had looked then to where the hills stood, too far off they might be seen. The Fat Moon was yet young, a slender crescent decorating a sky so serene, it belied the turmoil below. It shone over the massed lodges of the Commacht and the woodland to the south of the camp. There were more bodies scaffolded in the trees now, and amongst the tents women keened in mourning: the fighting had been fierce. He said, “I know only that I must go.”

“And leave us,” Racharran had said.

“I am not a warrior.” It had been hard to look Racharran in the eye. “I am a wakanisha robbed of his dreams. Perhaps … do I go to the mountain …”

“Perhaps!” Racharran had said, irritation a moment exposed, like a knife part-drawn, then again sheathed. “Perhaps and perhaps and perhaps. Can you offer no better reason?”

Morrhyn had said, “No,” and decided then he had best leave quickly.

“How will you find us again?” Racharran had asked, resigned now. “When you come back?” The way he said it made the “when” a lingering doubt.

“All well,” Morrhyn had replied, “I'll find my dreams again and they'll guide me.”

It was a measure of Racharran's trust that he nodded then and only asked, “When shall you leave?”

“With the sun,” Morrhyn had said.

He had left the next day, mounted on his favorite paint horse with what few supplies he carried lashed behind his saddle. He took no weapons save a knife and a bow, a quiver of arrows tipped for hunting, not war—he felt no desire to fight, and hoped no Tachyn impede his progress: he wanted only to reach the Maker's Mountain and find what answers lay there, if any did. He could not help that nagging whisper of doubt that murmured its traitorous pessimism in his ear.

He felt alone, even as he role with Racharran and two hands of warriors to the farther perimeter of the clan's temporary grazing. Dreamless, it was as if a part of his being had been taken away, a function so vital he no longer felt whole. He thought of men who had lost limbs or sight or hearing, and it seemed to him like that: that some vital and integral part of him had been cut off, leaving him less than he wished to be. He felt like a hunter whose left hand was gone, denying grip on a bow: useless. And so he must cling to that single hope, that the certainty he had felt
was
a promise of enlightenment and optimism. That in the mountains he should find his dreams again, find again that communing with the Maker that made him wakanisha.

But it was hard. The doubts dinned always in his ear and he wondered if he clutched at phantasms, or if somehow the strangeling invaders sent malign influences into Ket-Ta-Witko to lure and twist and weaken. He could only hold hard to that vision of the holy mountain, trust in the Maker, and commit to his chosen path.

He heard the hoofbeats fade and wondered how long he had held his breath. He was not much used to fear, not this kind, and he licked his lips and wiped a hand across his brow as the paint horse rose grumbling to its feet. He walked the beast up the slope, halting awhile below the ridgetop until he was certain the Tachyn riders had gone. Then he mounted and continued westward.

There was dust to the south where the riders had gone, and he wondered if the Tachyn rode against his own clan or the Lakanti: Yazte had answered Racharran's call with war bands that struck into the Tachyn grazing. But not enough: the Lakanti had their own affairs to tend, the summer hunting, the planting, and must also ward their bor
ders against Chakthi's madness. Morrhyn wished he might have spoken with Kahteney, but that had not been possible, as if, somehow, fate turned and twisted to deny sensible dealing and turn the world all to chaos.

And the others, he thought as he heeled the paint down the ridge's farther side toward a stream flanked with sun-washed alders, choose not to see or know, but rather ignore the madness. Juh holds his Aparhaso aloof, and Hazhe offers no help; neither Tahdase nor Isten, who follow Juh's lead and wander to the farthest reaches of their grazing, as if this war has no concern for them. If they came to us, to stand against Chakthi's insanity, then perhaps it might be ended and the People stand together.

Against what? doubt whispered in his ear.

Against those dreams I had, he answered himself.

But those were only vague and you've none now. You're dreamless.

Colun's warning, he told the speechless sky. The invaders who have conquered and slain the Whaztaye.

Who are beyond the mountains, held back by the Maker's promise. Do you now question that? Do you question the Ahsa-tye-Patiko? Do you set yourself above the Maker?

No, he moaned into his horse's mane. But I question men, and Chakthi, and what comes to this land.

He saw the country ahead blur, and realized that tears filled his eyes. He wiped them away, telling himself he must be strong and go on, because there was no other way. He thought then of that vision of the Maker's Mountain and for a moment felt its strength again, and that spurred him so that he went onward, knowing he had no other choice.

He crossed the stream and rode up through the alders to a wide plain where buffalo grazed. The herds migrated southward now, and in better times the clans would have drifted with them, the People and the beasts joined in natural union: the Maker's providing. Now there were only the buffalo, the Commacht living slim, the warriors without time to cull the herds for want of fighting Chakthi. It would be a hard winter without their meat.

He marveled at the size of the herd and turned the paint horse around its farther edge as the guardian bulls lifted up their bulky heads and snorted challenge. He skirted the herd and went on across the plain. Low hills marked the far skyline, and he thought he would find those heights by dusk and make camp, setting out traps. If he could
not eat buffalo meat, then perhaps he might snare a rabbit or a partridge.

Or perhaps go hungry: his life seemed all “perhapses” now.

As it was—a sing? He could not decide—his snares took two fat rabbits and he ate well, and in the morning woke to find magpies chattering in the trees. A flock swooped overhead and clustered around in noisy observance, which he decided was a favorable sign. But then, as he quit the timber for the wide swath of open grass beyond—all rolling down off the ridgetop to a sweeping valley that stretched across westward to another bundle of low hills that lay like a shadow across the horizon—he saw a flight of crows. They swooped down toward him and cawed loud and spun circles in the sky above so that he ducked in his saddle and thought it must be a sign countering the good fortune of the magpies.

He reined in and studied the expanse of grass ahead. It was very wide—likely a full day's riding to cross—and flat, devoid of timber. He thought that if Tachyn found him there, he should have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and should die.

And does that matter? he asked himself. He made obesiance to the Maker and urged the paint horse forward.

The Tachyn came from the east: five horsemen riding hard to intercept him.

They came up from a dry wash with whoops, and lances raised, and he heeled the paint to a gallop even as he knew they must overtake him and prick him from the saddle, his quest undone and wasted. He thought a moment of the bow he carried and then as quickly discarded the thought: he might take one or two—he was not so bad a bowman—but still he'd die, and nothing be solved or resolved. So he left the bow wrapped in its quiver behind his saddle and reined in his horse, waiting for them.