Joust (17 page)

Strange questions, certainly not ones that any Tian had ever asked Vetch before. Dangerous questions to answer, if the anger got the better of him. But the darkness made Vetch feel bold, and the calm and curious sadness in Ari’s voice cooled his ever-present anger, and he answered, though only after trying to keep his father’s advice in mind. “We—our family—held our land for five hundred years,” he said, with painful pride.

“Five hundred years.” A sigh in the darkness. “And did your father take arms against us? Or your brother? Or were you tilling the soil in peace, far from any battlefield, and never thought about war until the day someone came and told him that his land was no longer his and made you all servants where you had once been masters?”

Vetch felt his mouth falling open. Never, once, had any Tian
ever
said anything to indicate that the theft of the family land had been anything other than absolutely justified, the proper desserts for having been on the wrong side in the war. Just who and what was Ari?

He felt impelled to answer. “My father—my father didn’t know anything about fighting,” he said, his throat growing tight. “We knew there was a war, because so much of our crops went in taxes to feed the King’s soldiers, but we never saw any fighting.”

No, one long, slow year rolled into the next, and the time was marked by planting, growing, harvest, dry, winter, and flood, the six seasons of the year. No one but the tax collectors ever came to the village, for they were so far out of the way. Their farm was on the very edge of the swamp where the land became untillable unless you filled it in, one basket of earth at a time. And people did that; in fact, that was how Vetch’s forefathers had gained their land, they had won it from the swamp an inch at a time. There was fever there, and the insects were a constant plague, but the land itself was generous and offered abundance to those who cared for it.

The cruel memories came flooding back, and he stared at the darkness of the far wall, feeling his stomach and throat tighten as he spoke. “It was planting season. Father wouldn’t leave the farm at planting season, so I know he didn’t go to fight the Tians. And I never had any brothers, only sisters.”

Sisters who were surprisingly tolerant of the small brother who plagued them with tricks, his mother’s darling, his father’s pride. Mother, father, sisters, and grandmother; all had lived in relative harmony in the mud-brick house that had been added onto by generations going back decades. Vetch remembered every room of that house, the kitchen at the rear, that was the heart of the house, the little room with his mother’s loom, the storerooms, and that luxury of luxuries, separate little sleeping rooms for each of them. He remembered how, in the worst heat, they used to sleep on the roof at night for the sake of the breeze. He remembered how the sun used to pierce the high windows in his bedroom at dawn, and write a bright streak of light across the top of the opposite wall. The room was just big enough for his pallet—raised above the floor by a wood-and-rope frame—and a chest that held his clothing. But it was his, and when he dropped the curtain over the door, he could be quite alone with his dreams. That was when he still had dreams. . . .

“I don’t think my father ever saw a sword, much less ever held one,” he said, his throat tight. “The sharpest thing on the farm was his scythe.” He had to stop and swallow. “The war never even came near us; we just heard that the army was retreating, but we weren’t near the big road, so we never saw it going. I don’t think my father ever even thought about it; he was too busy worrying about the seeds and the seedlings.”

His throat grew tighter, his stomach ached, and his eyes burned. Vetch didn’t want to think about when it all ended; didn’t want to remember the day that the strangers came, with their bronze swords and leather shields, their long spears—how they spoke to his father as if he were a slave. He still didn’t know exactly what they had said; his mother had all of them sheltered in the house with her, when his father had ordered them there, she’d scolded as she never scolded until they all went into hiding.

But the memories came anyway, and once again, he was
there,
back in that kitchen, where the bread was burning on the hearth and his mother was paying no attention to it, though it filled the room with the scent of ruin. He was peeking around the edge of a door, and saw how the strangers demanded that his father kneel to them, like a serf. Saw how he cursed them, and picked up a sickle—

It wasn’t the anger that came, it was the grief. His throat swelled, and he wanted to howl out his loss like the jackals of the desert. But he didn’t dare. He stuffed his hand in his mouth, to stifle his sobs, and even his anger was not proof against the sorrow that threatened to overwhelm him.

One moment, and his tall, strong father had been standing, defying the men who—he now knew—had come to steal the land that had been theirs for centuries. In the next instant, he was on the ground, and his mother had burst out of their futile “hiding place”—as if the Tians hadn’t known they were there all along!—to fling herself over his body. Vetch saw it before his eyes as if it was playing out all over again; his mother was running toward the twitching body of his father, screaming, and his sisters followed her, adding their wails to hers, while he stood frozen in the doorway for a moment, before following them.

And there was red blood everywhere; it was saturating the front of his father’s kilt, pouring into the dust beneath his feet, a single drop on the cheek of his killer, a smear on the blade of the murderous sword.

He didn’t remember leaving the house, but he was running, too, not thinking, only screaming at the top of his lungs, screaming at the soldiers. Then, horror on top of horror, the Tian soldiers grabbed her, grabbed him, grabbed his sisters, with the remote indifference of a housewife taking up a chicken for the pot.

Grabbed them, throwing them down beside the road, in the dust, and if any of them tried to rise, they were kicked or clubbed with the butt of a spear until they stayed prostrate. He remembered the taste of dirt and tears, of the blood from his split lip, remembered how his youngest sister wouldn’t stop screaming and the soldiers kicked her in the head until they knocked her unconscious.

He couldn’t get any words past his closed throat, but Ari was just as silent. In a way, he was glad, because if Ari had spoken a single word, he might have flown at him in a rage, and then—

—well, he didn’t know what would happen. He certainly wouldn’t hurt the Jouster, no more than he had had any chance of hurting the soldier who had killed his father. But in another way, it left him alone in the dark with unbearable memories.

He remembered how, once he was face-down in the dirt, he shook all over; he recalled, viscerally, how he was afraid even to look up, while the sun baked down on his back, and flies buzzed in his father’s blood. He remembered that sound, that horrible sound; he was never able to bear the sound of flies after that. He remembered the bruises on his arms where the soldiers had grabbed him, on his ribs where they kicked him, the hundred and one scrapes and cuts where he’d been flung into the ground, the painful bump on his head where one of them had hit him with a spear.

But most of all, he remembered the terrible grief, and the helplessness. Grief that nearly strangled him, and fear, for the bottom had dropped out of the universe and everything he had trusted in was gone.

The soldiers made them lie there in the dirt beside the road as another stranger arrived, this one with a family and a wagonload of furnishings.

Then the soldiers dragged them off their faces, all but Dershela, who lay on her side, her face black and blue. Her, they picked up by her sheath, which tore, leaving one breast exposed, and dropped her behind the rest of them. The soldiers made them all kneel and watch as the strangers invaded their home, and went through the house, pulling out everything they owned.

Had
owned.

And before long, it was unrecognizable.

Every article was picked over; the little that the soldiers considered worth taking was pocketed, and the rest destroyed. Every bit of pottery was smashed, every scrap of fabric torn up, every bit of wood splintered and chopped to bits. Every possession was reduced to trash, then tossed onto the dust heap.

But not before his father’s body was thrown there first, with less ceremony than if it had been the carcass of a pariah dog, then covered with the trash that had been his possessions and pride. There was no burial ceremony for his father, no offerings, no prayers, no shrine. His ghost would roam the night, unhomed, rootless, unable to find its way to the Summer Country across the Star Bridge.

And then that Tian family took possession of the house that had been home to his father’s line, unbroken, for long, long years. As the strange furnishings moved in, the man’s wife began berating the servants that they had brought with them—and criticizing the house at the top of her lungs. Her shrill cries filled the air like the calling of a quarrelsome goose as she bullied her servants into emptying the wagon into the house that was rapidly becoming unrecognizable.

Only then was Vetch’s family hauled to their collective feet (except for poor Deshara, who was still unconscious) while the officer explained to them what all this meant—that they had been punished for harboring enemies of the Tians, for
being
enemies of the Tians, for attacking the Tians. That their land was confiscated, and they were graciously being allowed to live, even though their lives were forfeit because the male of the house had attacked an officer of the Tian army.

And that was when they learned what the word “serf” meant.

He could not remember the exact words, only the sense of it, but then again, the sense of it had been beaten into him for so many years that it hardly mattered. That he was bound to the land, and bound to serve the ones who owned it. That he had no rights, except that of being fed and housed. That he was of less import than the kitchen cat, who at least, was of a sacred line going back to the Pashet, the cat goddess.

And last of all, that within the space of a morning, he and his family had been reduced to chattel. They could own nothing, earn nothing, be nothing. They had become possessions, and ones of little value.

Then, after seeing their husband and father murdered for no reason, after lying without food or water in the hot sun for hours, after watching everything they had ever known utterly and wantonly destroyed, they were permitted to rise and start their new lives. They were allowed to make their beds out of whatever they could get from the discards and what they could gather with their own two hands among the weeds and along the riverbank. They were permitted to lodge in what had been the cattleshed, to work their own land without profit or payment.

He choked on his tears now, as he had then, when he had curled into a ball on the malodorous pile of river reeds, and wept himself into exhaustion.

And he remembered how from that day onward, he had eaten what scraps were given to him in bitterness, flavored with tears, seasoned with grief too deep for words.

He didn’t want to remember. But he could never forget.

“Five hundred years ago, boy,” Ari said softly, breaking the horrible silence, “Five hundred years ago, a people called the Heyksin came to Tia. Did you know that? To us, they are the Cursed People, the Nameless Ones, because of what they did to us. Only scribes, priests, and a few fools who call themselves scholars still know what they called themselves. And they destroyed our army, killed our King and our nobles, and sent their people to take the farms and livelihoods of Tians who had lived in their little mud-brick houses for hundreds of years.”

He paused, and breathed into Kashet’s nostrils. “So. Does that story sound familiar to you?”

“I—” Vetch couldn’t speak.

“Well, perhaps if I continue,” Ari replied, as if he had not heard that faltering reply. “Yes, they sent their people to become the owners and masters of homes they themselves had not built, had not tilled. And the Tians who had called those places home now served the newcomers as slaves. When the Tians rebelled, they were beaten and suffered further depredations, when they dared to strike against their overlords, dozens of innocents were slaughtered in retribution. That was what was happening to us, five hundred years ago, when your grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather was settling his little farm, winning it from the swamp beside the Great Mother River. Then we Tians learned to ride dragons, to drive chariots, and to make bronze swords and spearheads, and we rose up and drove the Heyksin out. There are those who even say that it was from the Altans that we learned to do these things, though most would deny this, or say that it was the gods themselves who taught us. Oh, we were so proud of ourselves! We were sure that the gods had blessed us, and that we were destined to create a great nation.”

“But what happened? If it was Altans who taught—” He stopped; he couldn’t go on.

Ari bent his head over Kashet’s. “Well, it depends upon who you ask. Some say that your people attacked ours. And that might very well be true—and it may not. I think it more likely that as we pressed northward, the Altans were pressing south, and we met and quarreled over the spoils. And perhaps it was only a matter of your kings hating ours, and ours despising yours. I think—only think, mind, that the Altans probably
did
attack us when we grew strong enough to threaten them. I believe that they originally hoped to put us, the younger kingdom, in our place. And Vetch, they
do
continue to attack us, there is no denying that; they do send young warriors into our villages to kill the important men or the Great King’s officials there. They set ambushes on the road to murder and rob. And we use this as a reason to muster the army and press northward again, to ‘pacify the countryside.’ The wrongs are so tangled up now that there is no disentangling them. The problem is, we did—and are doing—to you what the Heyksin did to us. The problem is, because we cannot catch the agents and soldiers, we take out our wrath upon those Altans we
can
catch.”