The Paper Sword (7 page)

Pathan Dogs

D
espite
that imbalanced feeling one gets when one is missing a boot, Rotan Smedenage was at that very moment making his way on foot back to the village of Sho. It had taken quick reflexes and skill last night to grab on to the tree root that jutted out from the side of the crevice, several feet down from the edge. And then it had taken a quite commendable amount of strength to pull himself up so he could stand on the root and lift himself from there up to the forest floor.

As he trotted along now, he clung to the tiny iota of pride this feat aroused in him just as desperately as he had clung to that tree root. But it was not enough. Below him yawned a great abyss of shame: Shame that he had been tricked. Shame that he had called out to a mere maid for his life. Shame that he had waited there trembling throughout the night hoping against hope that his earth boar might return. Only when dawn was coming, not long before the fire erupted in the tower tree, had he finally dared to set off on foot back to Sho. If he had only had the courage to leave earlier it would have closed the gap in his pursuit by several hours. Now he had to waste time walking away from them before he could re-arm himself and return to pursue them.

By the time he reached the perimeter of Sho, several hours later, Rotan Smedenage's shame had begun to transform into something a little easier for him to accept: rage. He clenched his fists over and over as he stomped through the empty streets bellowing the names of the inhabitants. Regrettably for his plan to enlist a group of them and set off in immediate pursuit of Xemion and Saheli, all the able-bodied were once again out at sea and this time they'd either taken their badly beaten children with them or instructed them to hide in the forest. For a moment he was filled with a new panic. What if the boy and the girl got away? He doubted they were stupid enough to remain there in that hollowed out tree they lived in. They were probably fleeing right now. And they had his sword! And they would already be hours and hours ahead of him. And where was his boar? Shoving two meaty fingers between his lips, he unleashed a shrill whistle that echoed over the treetops and reached even the ears of Torgee and Tharfen who, in accordance with their parents' instructions, were hiding in the shack in the forest where their family kept their fishing equipment. Torgee sat up immediately from the makeshift cot he was lying on. “That's him!” This drew no response from Tharfen, who after a long night of pain and a deep rage of her own had finally fallen into a fitful slumber. Torgee's own slow anger now gripped him. He got up quietly, grabbed the club his father used for killing fish, and furtively opened the door.

To Rotan Smedenage's relief his whistle was followed by a slight tremor in the ground, which increased as the massive boar, helplessly conditioned into subservience, ran to him. The examiner smiled his gentlest smile as the beast approached. Only when he had its reins in his hand did he punch it solidly on the nose. “Who told you to run?” He mounted the broad-backed animal and rode it to the kennel ship, which was anchored to a nearby dock.

Still one-booted, the examiner boarded the barge and slotted the key into the keyhole of the kennel door. There was a creak and a reek and a long lean snout full of fanged teeth poked through the opening emitting a high-pitched whimpering whine. He gave the nose a good smack. “Back,” he commanded, his voice firm and unquestionable. Instantly the snout withdrew and as he opened the door the first streak of sunlight in three foodless days poured into the inner recesses of the Pathan dog kennel.

Seeing those long fangs and hearing the racket from within as the other dogs began to howl in hunger, Torgee, watching from his hiding spot in the grass, knew that his plan, a plan to exact some instant retribution on the examiner for what he'd done to Tharfen, would have to wait. Trembling slightly with a mixture of rage and fear, he watched as Smedenage, dispensing a small chunk of codfish, allowed the first dog to emerge. Immediately its long snout sniffed at the examiner, seeking out those red hieroglyphs of blood written by the rose thorns all over his white garment.

“Yes, I am bleeding,” the examiner acknowledged with an almost gleeful pride as the animal nudging up the edge of his robe began to lick at his lower shins and calves. The examiner enabled this by pulling his robe up higher, exposing his full leg. Another dog emerged now and it followed suit, licking the examiner's other leg. “Yes, I have survived a vicious attack. They think they have killed me. But here I am.” As a third dog emerged, the first now abandoned the well-slathered shins of its master and leapt to the dock and the shore and began to nose about in the grass hungrily. “Now, I hope, my boys, that you are ready to eat. Because you will soon have two tender lambs to sink your teeth into.”

Bred for centuries in the tunnels of the underearth to hunt the mole-kind, the dogs had long, white, almost luminous heads, crystal eyes, and deep, thin-lipped, snarling mouths in which the two sets of curving fangs interlocked at their tips like daggers. Once they fastened themselves to something it was highly unlikely it would ever be free again. Torgee thought of Saheli being caught in the grip of those hideous teeth and he had to take a deep silent breath to contain his fear for her.

Seven dogs had now exited the kennel, blinking at the sudden light. Each one, after serving time licking at their master's ravaged thighs and arms, nosed about in the wet grass looking for food. Finding none, they began to whine and release the characteristic bone-like howls that so terrified the tunneling creatures of the underearth.

“Oh yes, my boys. They think I'm dead. They think they are out of danger, but you will soon be at their throats, won't you?”

Torgee continued watching as the examiner retrieved his second set of footwear, a pair of lambskin moccasins, from the cabin. Evenly shoed now, he gingerly remounted his boar and set off with his dogs for the roadway up to the plateau. As soon as they were out of sight, Torgee quietly and quickly made his way back to the shack.

Tharfen was still lying on her belly with her mother's comfrey cream glistening on the red ridges the examiner's beating had left in her buttocks and the back of her thighs. The intense burning pain enraged her and her mind was full of a lust for vengeance such as she had never known. Every movement cost her, but when Torgee rushed in and told her what he had seen and she thought of those vicious things tearing away at Xemion she forced herself to rise. Torgee tried to convince her that he should go alone to warn them but she could not be dissuaded from joining him.

“You can warn them on your own,” she said through gritted teeth, “but then you and them will kill him without me. And then I won't have no vengeance. And I want my vengeance.” She dressed herself quickly and grabbed her sling along with a good handful of her sharpest stones. Torgee used the time to gather the leather pouch in which he kept his lures and snares.

Even as the examiner once again flayed raw the hide of the poor boar, forcing it up the irregular increments of the old road, Torgee and Tharfen were rapidly climbing almost straight up through the narrow chimney of rock that led by a much shorter route to the plateau above. This would give them at least a two-hour advantage. The burning pain at the back of Tharfen's thighs did not slow her down. If anything, when they got to the top of the plateau and began to run through the forest, she pushed that awful pain and that mounting outrage into her running and proceeded all the faster because of it. Even with their shortcut, it took them until midmorning to get to the tower tree, but by that time they had seen the rising plume of smoke above the forest and were not exactly surprised by what they found.

“Do you think they're in there?” Tharfen asked as matter-of-factly as possible.

Torgee sniffed mightily at one of the tendrils of swirling smoke that streamed off the blackened branches of the tree about the tower. Exhaling, he shook his head. “I think they've run off.”

“With their old Mum?”

Torgee shook his head knowingly. “I don't think their old Mum will be going nowhere with nobody.”

“What do you mean?” Tharfen asked, a little angrily.

“Look.” Torgee pointed to the fire-blackened stone that Xemion and Saheli had erected at the edge of the clearing.

“You mean …” As the implications of this sank in, Tharfen grew truly angry. “That Xemion is such a liar!”

“I'm not so surprised,” Torgee said, sniffing the air. “I knew something was amiss. I think he was just keeping quiet to protect Saheli.”

“Such a liar!” Tharfen repeated.

“But not as good as he thinks he is,” Torgee asserted, with a tap of his nose.

With a trained tracker's eye he assessed the area as best he could, noticing outside the perimeter the examiner's green boot at the bottom of the gorge.

“That's why they think he's dead,” he said with great concern.

“So they won't know that he's after them with the dogs,” Tharfen said, trying to keep the tone of worry out of her voice.

Torgee just shook his head. “I'm going to have to go and warn them.”

“Not without me,” Tharfen said.

Torgee looked at his sister warily. He knew there was no use in arguing. He shrugged.

“What will we tell mother?” Tharfen asked.

“We don't tell her nothing,” Torgee said authoritatively. “We run and we get to Xemion and Saheli and then we run right back and no one knows nothing.”

Tharfen bent down to pick up one of Chiricoru's feathers and Torgee saw the flicker of pain in her eyes as the motion stretched the skin on the back of her thighs.

“Are you going to be able to bear it?” he asked, his eyes averted.

Tharfen's ambition was to be hard. Hard like her mother. And her mother was the hardest woman in the whole village of Cape Sho. “I couldn't bear
not
doing it,” she shot back, a little offended at the suggestion.

And so for the second day in a row, Torgee exercised his extraordinary tracking skills. His long, elegant nose flared mightily, sniffing the smoky air as he examined the grass beyond the ashes for tracks. And then he caught a scent and the two of them set off into the forest.

Sun, Moon, and Sword

X
emion
and Saheli ran all that morning, only stopping in order to pass Chiricoru back and forth. When he wasn't carrying the swan, Xemion ran with the painted sword in his hand, its silver glinting brightly in the hot sun. Saheli balanced the sunflower staff on one shoulder or used it to steady herself when they had to climb over jagged rocks. There was nothing else to carry. All the food and other supplies they had gathered so carefully had gone up in the fire. They were thirsty and beginning to get hungry.

Yesterday's storm system had not yet passed. Another dark thundercloud was piled up on the western horizon but the autumn sky was otherwise clear and blue, the sun shimmering and hot. There were few trees here and their flight would easily be visible to anyone positioned on the heights behind them, but Xemion had chosen this way in keeping with Vallaine's directions. He doubted if even on the odd chance Smedenage had survived his fall he could have retrieved his dogs so quickly as to be within sight of them yet. And once they got to the other side of the plateau they would enter dense forest where there were lots of rivers and streams flooding down from the glacier. They could wade in cool waters and slake their thirst and wash away their scent and thereby be that much more untrackable.

Toward midafternoon they reached the other side of the plateau. They picked their way carefully down the few last yards of rocky, mossy slope into the beginnings of the forest beyond it and they were at last out of sight from the heights they had left. In all this time they hadn't said a word.

Xemion was conscious of the fact that he was now farther away from home than he'd ever been. Slight tremors of terror at what he'd done to the examiner still shuddered through him, but surrounding all those deep feelings with its infinitely more powerful shimmer was the fact that he was on his way toward his lifetime dream. And not just the standard small lifetime dream that had once seemed so impossible to him — to somehow get training as an Elphaerean warrior — but the larger even more impossible dream that she was going with him and that she was his warrior beloved. For the hundredth time that morning he pushed the cycling delicious thought away. But it bounced back. What would happen tonight? What would happen when, as they must eventually, they came to a halt in the dark. Would they lie down together? Side-by-side?

Saheli had no such questions. She was just putting everything she had into running and carrying the bird as gently as she could. She didn't remember much of her life before she rescued Xemion from the river, but she did remember running. Running was good. It was always desperate and dangerous — a way to get free — but it was always good. Chiricoru's frequent half-blocked raw coughs coming from the jute bag, however, were not good. She signalled to Xemion at the first stream they came to and they stopped in the cool shade and watered Chiricoru and themselves and comforted the poor bird, for her neck was swollen and defeathered where the examiner had strangled her. With expressions of mutual guilt and anger, they gently lifted her back into the jute bag. Xemion strapped it to his shoulders and the two proceeded on their journey, leaving almost nothing behind as a sign of them having been there.

The examiner had no trouble getting through the thicket around the tower tree this time. It had been burnt to the ground, the smoke still rising up from it in ghostly coils. In the centre where the tree had stood, there remained only the burned-out hulk of a tower, smoke escaping through the high slits of its windows. The crystal observatory, long hidden in the foliage at the top, was now exposed from the ground, its many facets blackened and scorched by the conflagration.

Rotan Smedenage approached the smoky ruin cautiously. The closer he got to the tree, the more his lack of a sword gained prominence in his various strategic calculations. What if that mad youth somehow managed to slay all of the dogs with that sword —
his
sword? This had seemed so unlikely when he set out but now it seemed a distinct possibility. Well, he had outrun him once and he could do it again if it came to that.

Braving the heat and dragging the dogs over the charred ground, Smedenage kicked open the fire-blackened door and surveyed the inside of the tower tree. Such a structure hidden in a tree could only mean one thing, he thought: either a mage or someone else with great power had hidden here. But he had no time to examine it now. Once he had captured them he would have it thoroughly investigated. One thing was certain: They weren't in there. In all probability they had fled. He let the dogs go and they scampered quickly to the perimeter of the ashes where the fire had burned itself out. He was about to leave when he saw the scorched shape of his sword still leaning in a corner not far from the doorway. For the first time that morning the examiner smiled. Holding his breath against the smoke, he dashed into the tower and, wrapping part of his robe about his hand to protect it from the heat, he took back his treasured weapon.

It was a much more confident Smedenage who emerged from the tower. “Come, my boys,” he called gleefully to the Pathan dogs who silently awaited him. “We've got some hunting to do.”

He proceeded to the rain barrel at the scorched edge of the clearing. Here he paused to dip the heated blade into the water, and when it was cool enough he slipped it back into its scabbard. Just as he did this he spied something incongruously golden at his feet. His smile deepened as he bent to pick it up. Yes, his luck was changing. He waved what he'd found on the ground under the eager noses of the dogs — one stray feather from that chimerant's neck. At this the Pathan dogs went into an ecstasy of barking. Rotan Smedenage, sword at his side, remounted his sullen boar and followed their high-pitched baying as they set off hungrily into the forest.

Most of the Pathan dogs hunted together in a pack, but there was one, a lean grey wraith called Akil, who stayed apart from the others. He was old. He had been top dog when top dog meant something. When the Pathans themselves ran the kennels — when they scoured the hills and valleys and scaled the peaks with their trusted crystal canines and there was good hunting among the scared folk and there had been good children to eat. He remembered it more piercingly now that he was famished. He had also recently lost an eye. It was this that caused the rest of the pack to shun him and deny him food. He was even more malnourished than the others, but he was still crafty and good with a scent. He would show them. If they didn't need his guidance, his wisdom, then he'd be sure not to inflict it on them. That would not be being a good dog, would it? He would show them who was a good dog.

In the late afternoon, Xemion and Saheli came to a grove of ancient oak trees. By now the reverberations of the insects and the chittering of birds and tree frogs was loud and choral. There was a feeling of electric expectancy in the air. Perhaps it was the rain, which even though the sky was clear of clouds at the moment, seemed ever-threatening. A distant, barely audible rumble of thunder out at sea testified to this.

Having paused to water Chiricoru again, they took up their loads anew and rapidly descended the scarp into the damp, ragged shadows. It wasn't long after that when Saheli first became aware of the hint of an old melody playing in her head. Her mind grasped at it as she strode along but it was like a wisp of thread that slipped away with every attempted touch. It couldn't quite be heard. But it seemed like it must be a beautiful melody. At first it gave her such a feeling of security and strength she sought to clarify it — to hear the lulling undulation of its refrain in full, but it continued to evade her as she and Xemion moved forward through the undergrowth.

It took Rotan Smedenage, the earth pig, and the dogs a long time to cross the high plateau. And all the while the hot sun beat down as the dogs sniffed and scurried in all directions. By the time they got to the far side their tongues were hanging out and they were panting with thirst. The examiner cupped his pale hands and drank from the same stream quite near the place where Xemion and Saheli had drunk five hours earlier, but he didn't let the boar or the dogs drink until he'd had his fill. He made them stay before the stream, their own parched faces visible to them in the rippling current. How he enjoyed their obedience. When he had held them there that way long enough, he snapped his fingers and they darted for the water, too thirsty to even fight among themselves for first lap.

The other dogs kept the old dog called Akil away though, snarling and baring their teeth at him when he tried to get close to the water. He had to go upstream in order to drink in peace.

“Come back here,” the examiner shouted angrily. But the dog knew if he didn't drink soon he would die, so for the first time in his long life he disobeyed. Keeping his one eye downstream where the others were furiously lapping, he came to the very place were Xemion and Saheli had crossed, and there he found something of note. He barked and barked at the examiner, but the examiner was now ignoring him completely. So he picked up the golden feather delicately in his front teeth, swam with his head high to the other side of the river, and trotted back until he stood across from where the others were still drinking. One by one, their crystal eyes blinking in the brilliance of the sun, the other dogs slid across the cool waters, shook themselves off, and stood atop a crest a few yards beyond Akil. The earth boar hesitated, uncertain of these strange waters, till the examiner with a gleeful shriek of “Go” whacked his backside and sent him squealing across. Smedenage then waded up to his waist in the cool waters so that the encrusted blood on his cloak began to stream away from him. As soon as he reached the other side, Akil scurried up to him, and with his long snout laid flat to the ground, deposited the feather at his master's feet.

“Look at this!” Smedenage bawled at the other dogs as he bent down and held it up to the sky. “You missed this, didn't you?” The dogs all hunkered as one, from their various vantage points. “Do you see this?” He held up a chunk of third-grade salt cod, which he used to reward them. He looked down at the still submissive Akil. And then he popped the cod into his own mouth. He had just realized that the one thing he'd forgotten to bring along in his hurry to leave was some beef jerky. He had nothing to eat — except the dogs' cod. Savouring the salty morsel, he bent down to Akil and backhanded him hard across the face. “I've told you, don't run off like that. Or I will have your other eye next time.”