The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (22 page)

They just kept coming.

He kept killing.

At last a heap of hobgoblin dead surrounded him,
four or five bodies deep and ten bodies wide. He stepped out over
the mound. All of them were dead. None had fled the battle, as
humans would have if so many of their kind had fallen. Fae did not
know cowardice.

He cared about only one thing: Where was Dindi?

When I was no taller than knee-high, I was already
incorrigible, according to the aunties of my clan. Any time I found
trouble, which was often, one or more of them would wag her finger
at me and declare, “If you had a father to keep you in line, you
wouldn’t be such a scamp, young Tamio!”

My ma, however, would smile the secret smile she
reserved solely for any mention of my father.

“Fa, his father was far worse!” she would say, and
laugh to herself, as if she savored a delicious, clandestine treat,
a special snack she would never share with the rest of us. Not even
me, though I plagued her with questions. Who was my father? Had he
been brave? Strong? Handsome? Had he killed a thousand men? Had he
won a Shining Name?

Usually she swatted away my questions like
mosquitoes, but one day, when some of my cousins taunted me for
having no father to teach me to hunt, and out of shame and stubborn
pride, I refused to go with my Uncle Abiono to learn, she called me
to her hut to speak to me in private.

“It is time you knew why your father is not here to
guide you to manhood. It was not because he abandoned you, or did
not love you. He was not like Goro’s father, a drunken Rover too
poor and too shiftless to stay and marry the woman foolish enough
to spread her legs for him.

“No.

“Your father was a hero,” she told me. “Brave,
strong, handsome, yes, he was all of those things, but most of all
he was honorable and kind.”

She told me my father belonged to a secret band of
warriors who were fighting the Bone Whistler. My mother found him
wounded near the stream close to their clanhold. He had been in a
fierce dual with the Skull Stomper, the monster’s own right hand
minion. He had wrapped a white bandage about his injured leg, which
had turned scarlet when she found him. He begged her not to report
him to her kin, lest the Bone Whistler punish them all for his
presence. All he asked for was permission to sip from the stream
and lie unmolested until he saved up the strength to walk.

“Of course, I could not leave him outside to die,”
my mother told me. “I brought him pishas and corn and water. He
devoured it all. Then he asked me for beer!”

She laughed. “He was so charming by sunset I knew I
loved him. But could a great warrior love a Nobody like me? I
didn’t think so. Then he showed me two sticks, one with a bull’s
head and one with a stallion’s head. The first showed all his
kills. There were many. The second showed all the women who had
loved him. He had been a scallion and a scamp; he admitted it
freely to me. But then he broke this stick in half. ‘After knowing
you, I will never love another woman,’ he swore. ‘I will marry you,
this I promise. But I also gave an oath to my men, that I would
stand with them in one last battle against the Bone Whistler. We
mean to overthrow him.’”

“I wept with fear for him, but I could not hold him
back. I asked only that he kiss me that night, and he did.”

Her eyes misted as she told me this. Then she showed
me a conch shell. It was his parting gift to her, and it was no
ordinary shell. It was tied to his Chroma, he told her, and if she
blew it, he would hear it no matter how far away he was. If he
still lived, she would see a brilliant green orb of light. But if
she blew into the conch and saw no light, she would know he was
dead.

“He had me blow into the shell,” my mother told me,
“and indeed, I saw the brilliant orb of light, even though I have
no magic myself.”

He would return as soon as he could, he promised, as
soon as the Bone Whistler was overthrown. But if a full turn of
moon passed and he still had not returned, she should blow the
conch and look for the light.

“Only death itself will keep me from returning to
you,” he swore.

A moon passed and then another, and my mother did
not blow the conch because she was afraid. She told herself, he
would return. A third moon passed, and word reached Full Basket
clanhold that the Bone Whistler had fallen. Then she made herself
blow the conch.

She saw no light. My father had died giving freedom
to Faearth.

Bitter were the tears she wept. She felt sick and
sore and attributed it to grief, until her belly rounded so fully
she realized her fallen hero had left her one consolation, a
child.

Her clan berated her for bringing them a new mouth
with no man to till the cornfields to feed it. My mother could not
even tell them his name or clan or tribe. She had the idea, because
of his sticks with the bull and stallion heads, that he might be
from the Purple Plains tribe, but she had never asked.

She knew only that she had loved him, and he had
loved her.

I told no one what I had learned of my father. But
the taunts of my cousins no longer mattered to me, I just laughed
them off, and deprived of my shame, they stopped teasing. I learned
to hunt with Abiono. I dreamed of what I would have said to my
father if he had been alive, what we would have done together—all
the hunting and fishing and jests we would have shared.

Shortly before my Initiation, my mother gave me the
conch shell, the only token either of us had of that great man. I
told no one about it, or how much it meant to me, but I have kept
it with me through all my travels. Once, only once, I gave in to
the temptation to blow on it, hoping against all sense and
knowledge that I would see an orb of green light shinning, that
someone, somewhere, would hear and answer. As if he could live
again.

No light shone. I am no baby, but that night I did
cry.

It doesn’t matter that he never met me, my father
would have been proud of the warrior I’ve become. I’m sure of
it.

The first thing Vessia noticed outside was the
wind.

Orange Canyon tribehold was the highest human
habitation in Faearth. There were two separate peaks connected by a
bridge made from a single rope, called the Bridge of One Thread.
The majority of settlements were on the larger of the two, the West
Peak. On the East Peak, only seven huts stood, all of them ancient
and strange. Only the War Chief, his personal slaves and the High
Orange fae, the Vyfae, were allowed there. When the Great One met
with lesser men, it was in a stone lodge on the West Peak.

A dozen Eaglelords escorted Vessia and the Healer to
the Chief’s Hall, where a frail old man in a feather headdress sat
on a fleece upon a dais of stones. The War Chief of Orange Canyon.
Tavaedies attended him. Amdra was there, stone faced, but Vessia
could feel the terror she concealed so well from others. Vessia’s
treacherous brother by marriage, Vumo, was there too. He was drunk
and stank as though he’d pissed himself. Maybe more than once.

“There, I told you she’d survive,” Vumo said when he
saw Vessia. His words were slurred. “Vessia survives anything. And
the little Healer has a nice touch.” He nodded at the girl, who was
trying to make herself as small as possible. “Now! I’ve done all
you asked, Great One! By the Lost Wheel, can I go now?”

The War Chief waved a negligent hand at his
underlings. “See that he gets to the sheepmeet in the valley where
he can find more drink. That
is
what you want, isn’t it,
Vumo?”

“Mercy,
yes
.”

“Go then. Enjoy yourself.”

Vumo knelt and literally groveled; he bent his
forehead until it touched the stone floor. “Thank you, thank you,
Great One. And thank you for sparing my daughter despite her
stupidity.”

The War Chief waved that away as of no consequence.
Just the beneficent kind of tyrant he was.

Vessia shot Vumo a look of contempt as he passed
her. He grimaced and hurried out the doorway.

“How kind of you to visit me at last, Vessia,” said
the War Chief.

“You will regret bringing me here,” she said. “For
twenty years, you’ve had the sense to lay low and avoid war with
us. You were foolish to change that policy.”

“Unlike you, I have never changed,” he said. “But I
believe I have found a way to make things right between us at last.
The way they were before, when we were lovers. You will love me
again, as you used to, and help me in my great goal.”

“Rethink your insanity,” she said. “I will never be
yours again, and never, never will I help you, Xerpen.”

Xerpen, the Bone Whistler, formally War Chief of the
Rainbow Labyrinth tribe and now the Great One of Orange Canyon,
just smiled.

They journeyed south of the Boglands and up into the
foothills of the mountains, into the tribal lands of Orange Canyon.
It was like chasing winter uphill. A thaw had already taken hold in
the lowlands, but they left that behind, climbing blizzard-beaten
rocks, up and down and up (mostly up) switchbacks, into ever-higher
nooks in the mountains. Tamio and the other warriors clutched their
spears and bows a little tighter, and the group walked more closely
packed on the trail than before once they entered enemy territory.
They saw only a few sheep drovers in the distance, however, and
none who challenged them.

After a moon of weary walking (mostly up), they
reached Meet Rock, a bartering spot shared by several Orange Canyon
clans. It was a large, empty space of beaten dirt surrounded by
three successively larger stone walls. Orange Canyon clans adhered
to different traditions, which were not held equal in esteem. There
were the Eaglelords, small in number, all Tavaedies, who captured
and flew the Raptors, who were above all the rest; the Weavers, who
spun blankets and rugs on their massive looms; and the Sheep
Drovers, the great majority of the clans, who were dirty and poor
and disdained by the other two groups. All clans were welcome to
trade at the Meet Rock, but only Eaglelords could set their tents
in the inner circle, and only Weavers in the middle circle. Right
now, there were only a few tents there. Most of the sheepskin tents
were pitched in the outer circle, where a great number of sheep
also roamed. The bleating and the smell carried on the wind.

Warriors in ram’s horn helmets and sheepskin cloaks
challenge the travellers from the Green Woods.

“Have you come to trade or come to kill?” demanded
the Orange Canyon warriors.

Tamio and his fellows held up their black arrows.
“We’ve come to trade kills!”

Silently, the Orange Canyon warriors pulled aside
the wooden slats blocking the gate through the wall.

“Uh, why aren’t we killing them yet?” Hadi whispered
to Tamio as they entered the large enclosure.

“Hold back your blood lust, Hadi. We will fight them
formally soon enough. For now, we behave. They have their Ravens
too; those with deathdebts on both sides arrange duels, and no
matter who lives or who dies, both fighters, or their kin, break
the black arrow at the end of the fight. Debt paid.”

Tamio laughed at Hadi’s morose expression.

The Orange Canyon tribesmen were not friendly, by
any means, but they treated their enemy-guests decently enough,
Tamio thought. The travellers were allowed to pitch their own tents
in an empty spot of the enclosure. No one spoke to them, but no one
heckled or harassed them either. No one approached them to make
formal arrangements for the duals, either. Apparently, that was
considered a personal matter between individuals.

All that night, Tamio slept little and awakened
often, tense and aware of his vulnerability in an enemy hold. His
ears strained for the stealthy sounds of warriors creeping outside
his tent. Toward dawn, he heard a rustle at the tent flap, and
lifted the hem, spear ready. A placid ewe blinked at him, chewing
her cud.

By sunrise, the hold filled up with aunties sitting
on blankets, bartering their goods. Hundreds of sheep drovers and
their animals milled around the blankets, jostling for space,
shouting their offers, belittling the counter-offers. It was just
like a trade day on Barter Hill back in the Corn Hills, save a
trifle larger.

Tamio found the piss pits by their smell. After
taking care of the morning offering to the mud, he shrugged and
meandered around the barter meet, curious to see his enemies when
they weren’t running at him with spears.

They weren’t an impressive people, he decided. They
had short bodies, long snouts and they bleated annoyingly, much
like their sheep. He wondered where he would find worthy opponents
to win himself glory.

He heard a deep, rich laugh behind him. A
silver-haired man, roughened by years but still handsome, sat on a
tree stump stool with several other men, drinking corn beer. He was
in the middle of a raunchy story.

“…
so I told her, ‘let me slide the
stick in just a bit further,’ and she said, ‘how far, how far?’ and
I didn’t want to frighten her so, I said, ‘Not far! Just to this
line,’ and showed her the painted line on the stick. You should
have seen her eyes widen, big as two round shields! I said quickly,
‘I must do this if I am to help you with the spell to open your
womb to children,’…”

“And she believed you?” gasped the other men,
laughing and slapping their knees.

“Oh, a woman will profess to believe anything if she
has already made up her mind to spread her legs for you,” said the
silver-haired man. His grin was sly. “You just have to give her a
reason she can use to talk herself into doing what her body wants
to do anyway. So I slid the stick in—I’m sliding it in and out, in
and out,” –his lewd gesture left nothing to imagination— “you
should have heard her moan and sigh!—and she says, ‘how far is it?’
and I said, ‘Just up to the line, as I promised!’ and she says, ‘A
bit farther, please!’”