Hammerfall

“If you a

“What if I make him angry?” Clearly this was an abiding fear.

“Does a midge a

She did try, and loosened the amount of rein, but the knuckles were still white in their grip on the loose rein.

“All right. Let the rein fall to your lap,” he said. “Let it drop.” He saw now how it was, that this was a woman for whom the whole world had run away in chaos, and she was given one rein, and this one rein managed her course toward the edge of the world. She managed it with an iron grip. “Listen to me. Trust me. Let it drop.”

It was as if he asked her to leap over a cliff.

“Drop it, I say.”

She carefully let the rein lie in her lap, and sat like a rock precariously balanced, awaiting disaster.

“Foot up,” he said, while their beasts walked side by side, “in the crook of his neck. That stops you leaning forward and him pitching you over his head. Shoulders behind the small of your back. That prevents you sliding back over his rump. Your hips move as he moves.”

She sat like a rock.

“You’ve made love,” he said. “You were a wife. Followhim.”

She gave him a shocked glance. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

“There are worse things than falling off,” he said while that silence persisted. “Let your back sway. Don’t forget how.”

She gathered up the rein, having proved the beast would not bolt. He had robbed her, perhaps, of one sense of dominance over the world. Now he told her to make love to what she feared, and her spine was still stiff, her carriage eloquent of offense. But her spine began to give. She listened.

“If you wish to live,” he said, “make this beast your ally. If you should become separated from the rest, if you can stay with the besha, she’ll shade you from the sun, she’ll shelter you from the wind, and she’ll inevitably carry you to water if you don’t touch the rein. She’s your greatest help. She might be your life.”

She did not want to hear that either, he thought. But she listened. Her besha was a good deal happier with the partnership.

She was not the only offender. He showed the same lesson to an orchardman from Goson, whose name was Korin, to the potter, Kosul, from his own group, and to a woman from the west, Maol, a farmwife who blushed redder than sunburn, but who understood what he wished to say.

There were five among the forty-odd that he had no need to show. These were riders. Two were traders, two had been soldiers: on them Obidhen had come to rely for help.

And one was a Lakhtani woman, of the desert tribes, a dark-ski

Hati’s mastery over the beasts was sure as instinct, and she had a seat a western lowlander admired. She occasionally assisted Obidhen when the beasts grew fractious, and he had seen her rouse the beasts and settle them again by voice alone, that strange call that the desert-bred beasts knew. She was a gift, among them, one whose knowledge Obidhen’s sons attempted to gain, attempting to engage her in conversation… with intent of gaining more than knowledge, it might be.

But she went veiled, and disconsolate, and brooded. Marak shared a tent with her and never had seen her face.

They camped, and slept, and broke camp. The day seemed cooler than the last. The beasts were willing to move, throwing their heads and switching their tails with pent-up energy.

They crossed a wide pan, where a memory of water had made a crust, and leached up alkali. The beast’s feet grew white to the knee, and the caravan trail across this place was distinct, a track through the crust.

They crossed it, and the dark came down again, the stars brightening. Everyone had forgotten their instruction during the evening ride, with the beasts in a fractious mood, and made themselves increasing trouble. Marak peevishly reminded a few, and included the soldiers, who caused a disturbance in the pace.

But now they had entered a quieter time, pleasant, even cool air under the gathering dusk, and he found himself looking respectfully at Hati, and looking longer and longer. The hands were long and beautiful. The body beneath the veils seemed young. She was a puzzle, unique among those the Ila had gathered. The tribes stoned their madmen. Hati was here, alive. When he thought about that fact he could only be the more intrigued.

“The beast is yours,” he said, riding close to her. “Go with us or go your way. No one will prevent you.”

Hati said nothing, nor quite looked at him. In the deep dusk her dark hands showed lighter bands about the fingers and wrists. A tribeswoman’s silver, her respectability, had doubtless banded her wrists, lifelong, and now left only the paler flesh.

Her tribe had cast her out, he decided. They had kept what they wished, as they did the dead, from whom they stripped all ornament—silver being a useless distinction for the scavengers.

“Or will you stay?” he asked her, persisting in his attempt to draw her out. “I need your help. You know the Lakht better than any of us. Do you understand at all?”

The move of her head said yes.

“Then teach the rest of these villagers good sense. I see how you ride. Teach them.”

“Why?”

Why was a good question. “Because I asked the Ila for their lives. Because hanging in the holy city is easier than breaking a leg out here.”

She looked straight at him, hearing him, at least. All he could see was her eyes. She might be anything, think anything, beneath the veils. And she was as mad as he was. There was that.

“I’m Hati,” she said.

“Marak. Marak Trin.”

“I know.” She said not a thing more, nor did she encourage conversation. He left her, finally, and gave up on the attempt.

But during that night, by starlight, she rode by one and the other of the women, even the au’it, speaking in low tones, correcting posture, correcting a grip on the reins. The sun rose, and she spoke to men, more animated and more assured, even forceful in her corrections, even correcting the better riders. By midmorning the down-land men feared her direct reproof—never a loud reproof, but correct, and stinging, if she repeated it.

When they stopped to spread the tents at noon, Hati encouraged the wife, Norit, to ride the beast down to his sitting rest, and not to be handed off like baggage. Norit stayed in the saddle, and stepped off without help, and when the men still mounted saw that, they all did the same, though the orchardman was pitched off at the very last and sprawled gently flat on the sand.

Hati went and stood over the unfortunate man, hands on her hips, flung back her veil, and offered her sober opinion that he was learning, but should not have moved his hand from the saddlebow just yet.

Marak, just having slid down from his own beast, began to laugh then, a dazed, unanticipated laughter that seeped upward like water from the ground.

And once he laughed, others of the mad laughed. The orchardman got up and dusted himself off, taking the taunts of the potter in glowering good humor, and finally with a grin.

Then seeing the orchardman in better humor, madmen sat down on the burning hot sand and laughed until they rolled.

They were free. He had freed them all. Even the two who had walked off to die… they were free.

And once they had laughed, and wiped their eyes, then after all these days they began to talk to one another, except, always, the au’it.