Spirit Hunter (6 page)

A chief with hair woven in plaits speaks out, holding up one hand for quiet. “What will befall the Tribes if we allow the T ’ang to rule the Roads? Not only will there be taxes; it is but another way for the Empire to spread like a stain across our land.”

A shout goes up, rippling through the gathered crowd, and the spirit-horses burn so bright I blink. “Ay, ay!” men call. “Kotan of the South speaks truth – we must fight!”

“Fighting is no use. How can we hope to win?” My voice rings out, far louder than I’d meant. A thick, unfriendly silence falls around the talk-fire. Everyone is looking at me, a skinny girl wrapped in the deer-hide cloak of a shaman.

Taspar curses quietly. Baba lays one hand over mine. The dry warmth of his touch lends me courage.

Now I have begun, I may as well finish. I draw in a deep breath, straightening my back, returning the stares. “I had a dream—”

My voice is drowned by a roar of jeering and mocking laughter: “What shall we do then, wench?” … “Who is this girl, anyhow?” … “Why should we pay her any heed?” … “Go scrub the cook-pots and leave this talk to the men.”

“Leave my daughter be.” Baba speaks softly, but folk seem to listen all the same, and they fall quiet.

“Rein the girl in, then – who is she to speak out at our talk-fire?” calls Kotan of the South.

“She is one who deserves your respect, Kotan,” Taspar replies. And I think,
So does this mean I now have yours, dear uncle?
The one called Kotan leaps to his feet, ready to fight, and so does my uncle. What have I started?

“Peace, brother,” Baba says to Taspar, but he does not listen.

Everyone is staring: I wish I could sink into the ground.

The grey-haired shaman with the deer-spirit frowns, spitting. As I watch, he reaches into the leather bag at his waist and brings out a handful of something, casting it into the fire. A gust of flames boils up and everyone falls silent. Wordless, Taspar and Kotan both sit down again. I stare at the ground, head bowed.

“Speak not so to a shaman, Kotan of the South.” The older man’s voice is harsh, commanding. I don’t like the way he is looking at me: it is not friendly. A chilly, unsettling thought slides into my mind: since Tulan died, I have not been in the presence of anyone able to see my souls. Why does this deer-shaman seem so – so
worried
? That’s it: he looks worried. “Who are you, girl?” he says, never taking his eyes from me. “Who is your master?”

I swallow. My throat is dry. “I cannot say his name, for he is gone to the World Below, but the summer pastures of my tribe lie to the west of Samarkand, and his guide was an eagle.”

The deer-shaman bows his head a moment. “I know of whom you speak. May your tribe take my sorrow at the passing of a great man.” He sighs. “And dearly do I wish he were with us now, for your master held more power in his little fingernail than the rest of us put together. We are in need of one like him—” He breaks off and stares at me. No one speaks. All I hear is the fire crackling, distant shouting and laughter of children, and beyond that the hissing rush of the river.

Everyone stares but it is only I and the other shamans who see the old man’s deer-guide break away from his side and run lightly through the air towards me, shimmering with reddish light. I can’t breathe. I fight the urge to scramble to my feet and run, just to get away from the crowd, staring and wondering why this old man has chosen to single me out. The deer-guide gets almost close enough to touch, then shies away as if startled by a wolf in the forest at night, leaping back to the side of her shaman.

“Is that one you?” the deer-shaman says quietly, never taking his eyes off me. “There was a time when
your
power rivalled that of your master, wolf-girl. Am I right? And yet now—”

He knows. He knows I am losing my strength.

I am frozen with fear. “I – I don’t—” I whisper.

The old man carries on talking as if I have not even spoken. “Wolf-shaman,” he says, “before the sun sets come back to this fire. I will speak to you then.”
Does he really know that my wolf-guide won’t show himself to me? Oh, Mother Earth – I hope not.
Hot shame washes over me.

Baba turns sharply and looks at me, questioning. I shrug, trying to ignore the shiver of unease sliding down my back.

“This girl talks sense,” the deer-shaman says, glaring at the gathering. “It’s clear her mind is sharper than some of yours, hungry for honour and glory.” He spits again. “And that,” he goes on, “truly does not say much for you folk.” No one speaks a word. I swallow a flash of anger. What is his meaning? If I am a fool, these people are even worse? And how is it that when a young girl speaks, it is only to be mocked, while everyone is silent and respectful for an old man? Everyone stares, cowering, and the deer-shaman smiles, mirthless. “Hear this: in the time of our fathers we Horse Tribes ruled the steppe, and the T’ang cowered behind their walls, afraid of us. But the Empire has grown in strength since those days: the Emperor may be all but dead, yet his wife is not. We would be fools to doubt the Empress’s strength and the depth of her thirst for power just because she is not a man.” He pauses, but no one says a word. His deer-guide shines bright at his shoulder, a steady silver glow. “And the girl is right: we may not win a fight, should it come to that.”

More uneasy quiet, then a woman sitting near the back calls, “Time was, the Tribes brought terror to the T ’ang; they lived in fear of us. Who’s to say we can’t strike them down once more?”

The deer-shaman shakes his head. “Look about yourselves,” he says. “How many clans have sent men and women to this Gathering? All? Who could be so foolish as to think it? Is there anyone among us who has come from across the Great Desert?” His voice rings out, harsh and mocking. “What, none of our eastern cousins answered the call? Not one? Yet word was sent.” He pauses, and again his gaze falls on me. “I dream of being watched. Always watched.”

I suddenly feel cold, never mind the buckskin cloak and the fire’s heat.

Folk are murmuring now, looking about, uneasy. But nobody stands up to say,
I come from the east. I come from across the Great Desert, in the lap of the T’ang.

A man with a wind-reddened face stands up, raising one hand. He is wary: his spirit-horse shimmers, ears lying flat against her head. “Last summer, my brothers and I traded very far east, right to the rim of the desert. We heard whispers that men with the blood of the Horse Tribes fight in the Empress’s army for coin. We heard that the grandchild of our last great leader camps in the very shadow of her palace, doing her bidding like a child.”

Another low rumble of angry voices.

“What? Lord Ishbal has become the Empress’s pet? Come, that can’t be true.”

“Believe what you like. I know what I heard: Ishbal is not loyal to the Tribes but to the T ’ang. And he is not here, is he?”

“Traitors!” A woman calls. “We ought to hunt them down and cut their stinking throats!”

Wait. What was that?
The sun has slid behind a cloud, and a chill settles. I saw a shadow where there should be none. Heart pounding, I stare at the crowd, at the gathered tribesfolk.

“What are we to do?” someone shouts. “Let the Empire crush us?”

Raised voices blur into one roar: “We fight!” … “No, we must send envoys, bargain with them!” … “Don’t be a fool—”

I know now what I must do: I need to speak with the deer-shaman alone. I will tell him about my dream; perhaps together we can weave a plan that might save us. But what about the shadow-boy? It was only one afternoon in Samarkand, after all. Should I tell or not?

I see it again: a shadow, and the sun is still behind that cloud. Is this why I feel so cold? I blink, and catch a glimpse of a faded, ghostly spirit-horse.
Here he is,
a boy clad all in black like a shadow, scarf drawn across his face, as if thinking of him was an act of summoning. He’s on the other side of the fire, crouching between a fat woman with wild, unbraided grey hair and a group of young men.

He has found me.

I look up, across the fire. It is just me and the boy again, as if everyone else has melted away. He is masked once more, but I can see his eyes are thirsting for something, full of anger. Then he looks at me and I catch a sense of such a great, aching loneliness it knocks the breath from my lungs.

I should denounce you, here before all of my people, trailing and following me.

Instead, I run.

S
he saw me.

Drawing in a sharp breath, Swiftarrow watched the girl flee, black plaits snaking down her back as she ran, deer-skin cloak flying out behind her, wild and fast as a hawk. No one paid the slightest heed, not even the men she had been sitting with. Now she was lost among the throng. Once again, the sight of her had knocked the wits from his skull.
What is the matter with me?
Free of the crowd, away from the great fire and the rush of angry voices, Swiftarrow knew he must find his own peace again. The girl had seen him. Yes, she had skills – she saw what most people did not; she slid beneath the notice of others, becoming as nothing – but Swiftarrow had trained among the Shaolin since he was four summers old.
If an unschooled barbarian girl could spot me among a crowd, could escape me, I have strayed from the Way. My
chi
is weak. I must seek my path.
There was no time to waste thinking about her.

As Swiftarrow ran through the camp, seeking a place among the dark tangle of trees where he could meditate, he shut out the sound of children laughing, calling to one another, crying out their swift, hot joy at being alive.

By morning, they will all be dead,
he thought.
And I led their killers here.

He pelted through the trees, bare feet hardly touching the forest floor, the thick carpet of pine needles left undisturbed. He could hear General Li’s men now, the faint hissing of their campfires, someone laughing at a coarse joke. Most likely they were all sharpening their knives, fletching new arrows. He could not bear to be among them. Li and his raggle-taggle soldiers were thirsting for a fight after so long cooped up in that trader-inn outside Samarkand, and then the lung-bursting trek across the mountains, following the Horse Tribes’ trail. They were ready for blood, ready to kill.

He stopped, breathing hard, crouching down by a pine tree. Whispering tales of treason to the Empress back in Chang’an was one matter; causing the ambush of a gathering of men, women and brats was quite another. Swiftarrow pushed back his hair again, letting out another sigh. There were so many of them: children running among the tents, women laughing, calling out to one another, men talking around that great fire.

The children were really no different from little Eighth Daughter at home in the temple – only less able to defend themselves, for they were not Shaolin. So many lives all to be ended when General Li and his men rode out. Was duty to the Empress worth so much killing?
Only a few more hours of life on this earth, they have,
he thought.
When the sun has risen, they will all be dead. Surely it cannot be right?
Swiftarrow cursed and spat on the ground. It was wrong, however he looked at it.

He pushed the thought from his mind. There was no choice.
White Swan’s life rests on it,
he told himself.
You have your orders. Obey them and return to Chang’an.

He leaned back against the pine tree, closing his eyes against the forest, closing his ears against the far-off hum of voices from the barbarian camp and the nearer sounds of General Li’s men talking among each other, playing at Go, clicking the black and white stones into place on a grid scraped onto the back of a shield. Across the clearing, a deer ran, dappled, half hidden in shadow. Peace was near. But in the dark corners of Swiftarrow’s mind, there waited a girl with long black eyes and a dirty deer-hide cloak who rode lighter than a leaf on the wind.

Swiftarrow would be sorry to ruin her life, he knew. Before peace came at last, he thought:
Forgive me—
He did not even know her name.

Before the sun was down, she would be his captive.

S
carcely thinking, I run through the camp, past the throng of tents – more than I have ever seen in one spot – past the women and girls brewing tea outside, calling to one another, joking, past the racks of deer meat hung out to dry, older children chivvying the small ones away from campfires, horses in the long pasture. Not everyone left their womenfolk and children behind as we did. I wish they had: what if the elders choose to fight? What will happen to them all?

Led by the cool smell of fast-running water and the shouts of children filling buckets for their mothers, I make for the river: a wide sweep of water shaded by trees, hemmed by shores of flat grey pebbles. Sure enough, here’s a gang of brats dipping pails, splashing each other and swimming. I pass them by, leaving their whooping and laughter echoing behind.

Who is he? What does he want?

If that boy is hunting me, I must think like the hunted: I’m going in. The water will break my scent. Leaving my boots and trousers on the bank, wearing only my thin tunic, I swim up to the river’s bend where the pebbles and the tangled fronds of weed fall away further and further beneath me. I pull the leather ties from the ends of my plaits and tie them about my wrists, shaking out my hair. It’s good to get it wet, to feel the cold of the river against my skin. I swim on my back, gazing up at the cloud-stained sky, the whiteness of the mountains.

He has followed me all the way from Samarkand. What does it mean? It is like spotting a glittering coin on the riverbed, grasping for it, but not being able to see clearly enough through the rushing water. When I am old and dying, and I look back remembering this boy, who will I see?

I break the water’s skin. The heat of the sun is a shock, warming my head, my bare arms and shoulders. The quiet here rattles my peace. I hear the river’s song, wind whispering through the trees, the harsh cry of a bird hidden among the darkness of the woods that crowd the riverbank, beyond the sweep of flat grey pebbles.