The Warrior Who Carried Life (4 page)

“Does she work all day in the fields and then do morning and evening in the kitchen?” Cara asked, her voice still cold.

“Well, she’s a woman,” shrugged the man, made uncomfortable. Then a light came into his eyes. He became a caricature of cunning. “And a hard worker too, Sir. I think you’ll find it’s not sleep that’s making her sit on your lap. No, she’s a rugged hard worker, and does as she’s told.” Even he had to add, out of truthfulness, “Usually.”

“I want her,” said Cara.

“Oh, well, what are we talking about,” said her father. “I hope you mean only a decent marriage, Sir. That there is my only daughter, and a valuable worker for me and my sons. My one real treasure, Sir, and my pleasure and my comfort.” He added, darkly, “There’ll have to be a dowry.”

“I’m as poor as you are,” said Cara.

“Well, no marriage,” said the man. “And me and my sons can make sure that there will be nothing else, either.” He was bargaining, merely. He waited for Cara to make an offer. He leant down and whispered. “As a matter between us, I can tell you, Sir. She goes on the blankets.” The straggly-bearded, sallow little man pulled back, a meaningful glint in his eyes.

That, if nothing else, would have made up Cara’s mind. “You don’t understand,” Cara answered. “I’m taking her. If she’ll come.”

“Tuh,” said the man with a shudder of fear and laughter. He looked for support at the women ringed around the fires. They were fascinated, now. “You? Take her? With nothing but a shirt and a loincloth to you? My daughter’s worth more than that.” He stepped forward and pulled her arm.

“Get up, you bitch’s hole, sitting on the pegs of strange men when I’m asleep! Get up and get me food.”

Cara’s arm encircled the girl, and held her, and would not let her go.

“Who are you, pushing and pulling?” she suddenly yelled at them both.

“Your father wants his breakfast. You are going to stay in this chair and rest.” Cara had to fight to hold her. “I’m going to cook it.”

The girl stopped pushing against him. “You are?”

“Yes. If you’ll get off me.”

Mouth hanging open with surprise, the girl stood up. She looked helplessly at her father. “Well, if he wants to, Ata.” She sat down, and with the strangeness of what had happened, blurted out a laugh. The other women in the kitchen crowded round to see the beautiful stranger with his funny walk fill an old square pot with water from the cistern. The girl’s father seemed to swell, and put both his hands on his hips in a kind of relieved swagger. “Well, I must have left myself behind in bed this morning.”

The fires were piled behind two waist-high, horseshoe-shaped walls. Amid the embers, pots rested precariously on stone columns. None of them were empty. Deftly, Cara jammed a large branch within the horseshoe and hung her pot from it.

“Well, he’s practised enough at kitchen work,” chuckled a woman with bird-like arms and hanging belly. “Maybe it’s your sons he wants to marry.” More laughter, even from the girl on the chair.

“I don’t think women should work harder than men?” Cara said, as a question, looking into the eyes of the old woman. The truth of it struck the woman’s face, and the laughter fell from it. True enough, the face gestured silently to a friend.

“Your rice, girl,” Cara asked, holding out her hand. “Come on, I’m not going to steal it.”

Her face quickening with some new emotion, the girl reached down into the front of her dress, and lifted out the tiny knitted sack. Without looking to her father, she passed it to Cara, and she was smiling, with hope, though her eyes were wide and sad. Her father, at a loss, tried to look amused and victorious.

The rice was boiling when the farmer came in.

“Keri, you’re not in the fields,” he said, simply.

“It’s this man, Sir,” said Keri, the father. “He’s distracting my daughter, Sir, so that she wouldn’t cook, and now I’m late and I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”

“Then you shall have to work without your breakfast, won’t you?” said the bondbearer.

“Yes, yes Sir,” said Keri, dipping as he spoke.

“I shall bring it to you in the fields, if I can,” said Cara, over her shoulder. “Or perhaps your daughter will.” Her legs were starting to throb again.

“You’re working,” said the bondbearer to her. “Good. Legs don’t look so bad. Perhaps you’ll be in the fields tomorrow.” The bondbearer was a heavy man, with bow-legs, wearing what his workers wore, except that he had all of it together: the heavy white robe that could be bound up around the waist for wading through paddies, trousers to the knee, shoulder straps for his sandals, a wine bag, and a broad round hat made of reed that hung down behind his back. In one hand, coiled, was a whip.

“I’m not going to be your bondman,” Cara told him.

“Aren’t you? Then how are you to pay for the food you’ve eaten?”

“I have eaten none of your food, and as for a stone floor and a dirty blanket, all I owe you for that is gratitude.”

“I don’t do trade in gratitude.”

“Then you won’t get any. Not from me. You must do a trade in other emotions.”

“Certainly not in insolence,” said the bondbearer. “Not in my own house. Get out and walk with your wounds, if you’re able. No boots. No clothes. Tuh.” He jumped up onto the table, sat on its edge. “I can give you boots and clothes. And food, oh yes, even you cannot do without food, young Sir. I’ll give you these things, and shelter from the sun. And you work for me only long enough to pay for them. You look strong enough, apart from your legs. You should be able to work it back in no time. You’ll need to rest, you know, rest to heal. No one’s going to give you that for free. Except your own family. From the sound of your talk, they no doubt once would have. But I don’t want to delve. Take your choice. Food and shelter in exchange for an honest man’s work. Or out, now, I’ll not keep you.” He looked at the girl. “That rice is done,” he said. “Take it to your father.”

“But . . .” she began to protest. It plainly wasn’t.

“It’s done because I say it is,” the bondbearer said.

The girl stood, still weary, hand on her knees to push herself to her feet. Then she strode to the fire and grabbed Cara’s arm.

“I’ll go with you,” she whispered fiercely, her eyes hard and hungry, encircled with dark baggy flesh.

Cara was going to tell her no. The bondbearer was right. She couldn’t walk, she had no shoes, she had no feet. She could hardly stand any longer in front of the fire. She was weak with standing, and hungry, ill with hunger. The bondbearer would come after them, and Cara could not run. Cara was going to shake her head, say no, I cannot take you, I cannot take myself.

“Move, girl!” the bondbearer said, suddenly loud, sensing victory.

There was only one small window in the kitchen. Suddenly, as if it were a pursed mouth between bulging cheeks, wind blasted through it. A cloud of dust slammed through the kitchen door like a fist. The farmer turned and hid his eyes; the girl cried out. Cara felt a nestling, almost tender like the snout of a pet, in her right hand. Shielding her eyes, she looked down. Point resting on the floor, was her sword. It bumped against her hand again, insistently, and Cara took it up. With a humming noise, like the Spell of Sitting on Air, her shield floated in the air through the door towards her.

“Come on, girl!” Cara bellowed and grabbed the bondgirl’s hand and pulled, squinting against the dust and wind.

“A sword!” the girl shrieked. “But how? But how?” She did not see Cara pluck her shield out of mid-air. Together they hobbled across the kitchen, the girl inserting herself under Cara’s shoulder for help.

“The Law! The Law!” the bondbearer shouted, rising to his feet.

Outside, chickens that had been let loose for a morning peck were being blown across the stone, balls of clucking feathers, and there were crashes from inside the main house as things were blown over.

Walking out of the desert, came Cara’s armour, breastplate and helmet uninhabited by a body, but in their proper places, the boots walking by themselves. “What manner . . .” Cara began, and then understood. The armour broke into a run to meet its mistress. It met her, and spread, enveloped her, and suddenly boots protected her feet, and a helmet covered her head.

“Magic!” the girl laughed, thrilled by her luck. “Magic!”

The bondbearer stared in his doorway, stunned, watching the two of them stumble away across the yard to the gate. Staggering under Cara’s weight, fighting the wind, the girl pulled it open. The two of them slipped away. A spear followed, all by itself. It hopped on one end. The farmer watched in disbelief, until the gate fell shut and the wind died. Then he roused himself.

“Kawa! Harig ban Har!” he roared, running with heavy ungainly strides towards the stables.

The road from the farm was absolutely straight, all the way to the river, with irrigations and paddies on either side of it in tidy patterns, flat and steamy with only wispy borders of reed in which to hide.

“Who is he calling?” Cara asked.

“The men who train the dogs,” said the girl in a voice that suddenly sounded small, and she felt Cara go still and icy beside her. “What other magic do you know?” the girl asked.

“I can fight,” Cara said, without much hope. “Get me there.” She pointed with her sword to a narrow track that ran along a bank between the paddies. It would be better to face the dogs there than on the wider road where they could be more easily surrounded. They tried to run, with an awkward pumping motion, limping, hopping, along the road to where the track turned off it. Bondmen working in a line across the rice field stood up to watch them, their faces in shadow from their broad hats, wriggles of reflected sunlight playing on their faces.

From within the compound of the house there came an agonised baying, as if the beasts were in an extremity of anguish. Then a kind of squealing snarl in chorus.

“They’re off the leads,” panted the girl, bearing a good part of Cara’s weight. “If they grab you, they’ll never let go, until the master tells them. Go for their eyes then, poke them out with your thumbs. If one of them gets me, kick him in the balls. If it’s a bitch, stick it up the rear.”

“Front legs?” Cara asked.

“If you can get both at once and pull them apart hard, they die, yes. If you can do it without having your throat torn out. Their hearts stop.”

“You’ve seen this before.”

The girl simply nodded. They stopped on the track, and turned, and stood back to back, and Cara passed the girl the shield and the spear. “They’ll hit me first. Try to fend them off, like with a stick. The shield’s got a sharp edge, use it like a club.”

The gates of the farm swung open, and the dogs poured out, tall, grey, shaggy beasts, with barrel chests and long thin black legs that moved in great loping strides, black eyes, flapping ears and tongues and black lips drawn back from fangs. Men in thick leather aprons and gloves followed the dogs, and the bondmaster, holding his hat on his head as he ran. The workers in the field called warnings to their friends, and stood up straight, hands by their sides.

“Will they go for them as well?”

The girl shrugged. “Not usually. Unless they run.”

Only on the other side of the road, catspaws of wind disturbed water on empty peaceful fields. “I’m sorry,” Cara said.

“Better to die free, eh?” the girl said, but it was a question.

They heard whistles and shouts. Two of the dogs had become confused, and peeled away from the pack, plunging down the bank into the water of the rice fields. The nerve of some of the bonded people broke, and they ran, mud clinging to their feet, sucking them down. The dogs leapt from one row of rice to the next, where there were roots and plants to give them support. Cara counted the remaining dogs: eight left. They turned in a pack, like a dark stream, from the road onto their narrow path. Cara saw, glancing at the rice field, a dog launch itself onto a bondman’s back, jabbing its teeth into the back of his neck. The man’s head was held underwater.

“The dogs killed my mother,” Cara said. She wanted someone to know that.

“And mine,” whispered the girl.

Then the dogs were on them, close and fast.

“Not this time,” Cara promised herself. “Not this time. Not again.” A dog leapt toward her.

Cara’s sword seemed to launch itself in an arc, slicing across the dog’s neck. A dying weight struck Cara in the chest, and she felt an almost gentle brush of cool, moist teeth against her neck, as she wiped the weight away from her with her free arm. She drove the sword down, into the back of another dog’s neck. The sword struck between two vertebrae. Cara felt the whole muscular body shudder and twist, and begin its death jitter, flanks twitching. The sword would not come free. Teeth sunk into Cara’s shielding left arm. Twin, needled vices closed around both of her ankles. The dogs had her.

Behind her, the girl gave a little cry, not of terror, but surprise. Cara could not turn; another dog was clambering up over the backs of its mates to get at her. With a sudden ringing clang, the shield, floating in the air, struck it across the head, splintering bone, then sailed, humming, back around to the girl. With a wrench, the sword came free. Cara swung backhanded at the beast that clung to her left arm, cutting open its belly. She slammed the sword down onto the backs of the dogs who held her ankles, back and forth, back and forth between them, opening gashes over their ribcages, but their mouths still gripped her. Another dog leapt.

Cara felt her helmet eased from her head. Then suddenly it dived, with its pointed crest, ramming itself into the gullet of the dog who was leaping for her, and she understood finally that she could control it. She punched with the helmet, pushing the dog further and further back. It choked, and coughed, frothing up mingled blood and saliva. The clenching around one of her ankles loosened and she kicked her foot free.

There was a sudden, bitter stinging across Cara’s sword arm, and something like a dark serpent wrapped itself around her wrist and held. It was the whip. At the end of its taut length was the bondmaster. The two remaining dogs, spinning in circles about themselves, wriggled back miserably to their masters. The beasts had never faced people with weapons.