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Chapter Five
A pair of silvery rings surrounded the golden face of Guthay, Athas's larger moon, as it neared its zenith in Urik's midnight sky. It was the fourth night in a row that Guthay had worn her crowns, and though Hamanu was alone in his cloister, he knew he wasn't the only man staring at the sky. One more beringed night, and farmers throughout his domain would go down to the parched gullies that ran around and through their fields. They'd inspect each irrigation gate. They'd dig out the silt and make repairs as necessary. Later, they'd meet with their neighbors and draw a numbered pebble out of a sacred urn to determine the order in which the fields received their water.
The lottery was necessary because no one—not even the immortal Lion-King—could predict how long the gullies would seethe with dark, fertile water from the distant mountains. Hamanu couldn't even say for certain that the gullies would fill. A score of times during the last thirteen ages, the flood hadn't come.
All Hamanu knew was what he'd learned from his mother and father long, long ago. When Guthay wore her gossamer crowns for five nights ru
The folk of Urik prayed to their immortal, living god and entreated him with offerings. Already a steady trickle of farmers—nobles, free-peasants, and slaves alike—made their way to the palace gate to offer him a handful of grain. Sometimes the grain was knotted in a tattered rag, other times boxed in a carved-bone casket or sealed in an enameled amphora. Regardless of the package, Hamanu's templars emptied the grain into a huge, inix-hide sack. When the water came, Hamanu would sling the sack over his shoulder and, in the guise of the glorious Lion-King, he'd sow four fields, one to the east of the city walls, the others in the north, the west, and the south.
Tradition, which Hamanu didn't encourage, held that the gift-grain toward the bottom of me sack—the grain that the Lion-King had received first and sowed last—was lucky grain, which presaged great bounty for the farmer who'd donated it. The mortal mind being what it was, Urikite farmers didn't wait for Guthay's fifth ringed night before they brought their gift-grain to the palace. They took the moon on faith and brought their grain early, despite knowing that if the rings did not last for the full five nights, the sack would be emptied, and any grain it had held would be burned.
None of this surprised Hamanu. He'd been one of them once. He knew that all farmers were men of faith and gamblers in their hearts. They gambled every time they poked a seed in the ground. They regarded the gift-grain as a faithful way of evening their odds.
It was an act of faith, as well, for Hamanu, the farmer's son, when he strode barefooted through the fields, scattering the gift-grain. But a man who let himself be worshiped as a god could have faith only in himself. He could never be seen with his head bowed in doubt or prayer. This year, with the Shadow-King's armies dancing along Urik's borders and a pitted remnant of the first sorcerer's magic still fresh in memory, Hamanu's doubts were especially strong. He'd pray if he knew the name of a god who'd listen.
The longer he delayed summoning the second and third army levies, the greater the chance that Urik's enemies would attack. If he summoned his citizen soldiers too soon, the fields wouldn't get sown, the grain couldn't grow, and, win or lose on the battlefield, there'd be no High Sun harvest. And if the waters didn't come at all...
For five years, I fought beside Jikkana in the army of Myron Troll-Scorcher. There was nothing about her that reminded me of Dorean or Deche, which is probably why I stayed so long. She was a hard and homely creature who cursed and swore and drank too much whenever she had the opportunity. I never knew if in me she saw the son she'd never had or simply another farm boy with fire in his gut, who would finish the brawls she started.
Jikkana taught me human script and how to fight with a knife or a club, with my teeth, fists or my feet—or whatever else was available. She had a temperament like broken glass, and sooner or later, she fought with everyone, me included. In all the years she marched with the Troll-Scorcher's army, though, she came no closer to fighting trolls than that day I'd met her in Deche.
As the sun descended through the Year of Priest's Fury, two decades' dissipation in the Troll-Scorcher's army caught up with Jikkana. Her lanky muscles melted like fat in the fire. Leathery flesh hung in folds from her arms and chin. She coughed all night and spat out bloody bits of lung when morning came. I carried both kits as we marched and foraged for herbs that might restore her, but it made no difference. One afternoon, she collapsed by the side of the road.
I offered to carry her along with her kit.
"Don't be a fool, Manu," she answered me, adding a curse and a cough at the end. "I've gone as far as I can go, farther than I'd've gone without you. No farther, boy. Let's get it over with."
Jikkana handed me her knife. I made the cut she wanted. I'd wrung bird necks when I helped Mother prepare supper, and I'd held the ropes while Father slaughtered culls from our herd. I was no stranger to death, but as men measure such things, Jikkana's death marked the first time I'd killed. Life's light faded quickly from her eyes; she didn't suffer. I held her corpse until it had cooled and stiffened. Then I carried her to that night's camp. Jikkana had been the first teacher in my life after Deche, and I paid for what we drank as we sang her spirit off through the night. When the sky began to brighten, I dug her a grave and piled stones atop it to keep the vermin from digging her up for supper.
The long shadows of dawn bound me to her grave.
I expected to weep, but my tears never flowed. There were none inside me. I had wept in terror when Deche had been destroyed, but I hadn't wept for Dorean. I couldn't weep for anyone else.
I scratched Jikkana's name onto a shoulder bone, forming the letters the way she'd taught me, then I shoved the narrow end among the rocks. I'd scratched a few words as well on the underside, using the trollish script I'd learned in the ruins above Deche, which none of my companions could read. Stretching the truth a bit, I wrote that Jikkana was an honorable woman and that she'd never laid hands on a troll, which was true enough and might give the trolls a moment's pause before they desecrated her grave.
There were trolls nearby. There were always trolls nearby in those years. After a generation of retreat, Windreaver had brought his army back into human-held land. Deche was among the first of the human villages that fell to Windreaver's wrath those five years while I marched beside Jikkana. We never caught up the trolls that killed Dorean and my family, though we'd followed them for almost a year and saw more examples of their handiwork than I had the heart to count.
But there were trolls nearby, and we'd learn to track them. We made reports to the Troll-Scorcher or his officers when they rode their rounds.
We never fought trolls. Never. Neither Jikkana nor Bult, the yellow-haired man who led our band, nor any of the veterans had a notion how to fight our gray-ski