Hammerfall

“Omi,” Marak said to him, drawing near, and told him the matter of Tain and a rebellion within the caravan, not knowing where Agi might fall on the matter of Tain’s war, and the abjori. He was a voice in the dark. So was Agi.

“We’ll keep an eye to it,” Agi said as they rode.

“Have you heard where Kais Tain might be?” Antag asked. They had asked that of every village.

“I’ve no idea. Forward or back of us, it’s all the same to me. This is a fool’s errand, this moving to another tower. Stupidity. You’re Marak, are you? Tain’s son? Tain Trin Tain?”

“The same.”

“Fool. Fool to bring us away from Oburan.”

“Oburan’s dead,” Marak said doggedly. “There’s no other place, no other destination for caravans after this. I’ve been to the tower. I know it’s there. I know what’s there.”

“You’re the prophet.”

“I’m the Ila’s man. With Hati an’i Keran.” He added, fully cognizant that there might be feuds: “With a woman named Norit.”

He could make out only that the elder turned his head to stare at him. The veils, the sand, the night, made their emotions invisible to each other. It was impossible to placate this man with a gesture. There was only this one chance to talk to him; and he knew Norit had not been a widow: she was a married woman, and by the law, yes, they were adulterers.

“Norit din Karda is dead. Her mother is dead. Her father is dead. Her aunts are all dead. And she’s dead.”

“To the life she had in Tarsa, yes. She is.”

The old man made no reply.

“Is Lelie dead?”

Still there was no reply.

“She named that name to us,” Marak said. “Is it a sister? A mother? A daughter?”

The old man was still a while answering. But Marak waited.

“The girl’s with her father,” the old man said. “As she should be.”

“A daughter, then.”

“Yes.”

“Does the father treat her well?” He as much as any man knew the situation of an unwanted child, and the fate of one dragged into the affairs of state and the angers of leaders.

“She’s alive,” Agi said flatly. That was all.

Not a good situation, then. And Marak made a quick decision, a desperate and dangerous decision, since if there was one person on whom thousands of lives relied, it was Norit, through whom Luz spoke most easily; and if there was one person whose sanity was in greatest danger, it was Norit. “If the father isn’t happy, then give her to me, omi. I’ll relieve the father of an obligation and take good care of her.”

The old man considered the proposition.

“This is a great lord,” Antag said across the wind-battered gap. “What he says he’ll do, he’ll do, omi.”

The old lord reined aside to one of his own men and spoke.

Then that man, no skilled rider, managed to turn aside in the storm and the dark and the stubborn persistence of the beshti in evading the wind, and to go back into the caravan of Tarsa.

No one spoke. The effort to converse was too great, and Agi had no great desire to speak to them, that was clear. Marak waited, thinking how he had come out into the caravan to take a life close to him and now bid to save one he had never met.

Memnanan’s messenger had never gotten here. Why that was he still had no idea, and saw no profit in asking: it was the desert at fault, the abjori, his father, or Agi himself, but it was nothing he could mend now, under present circumstances. In some measure he was a fool even to trouble what was settled, a fool to think of taking a young child back the route he had come. It was a dangerous enough ride for him and the Rhonandin, and he had no idea of Norit’s frame of mind. One might: Marak, Marak, his voices raged at him. But he paid no attention. He shut his eyes. He rode without attention to anyone. He waited.

Men moved forward in the line, one that might be the old man’s messenger, the other that might have some answer about the child, both faceless shadows in the violent, sand-edged dark.

“Where is this Marak Trin?” one asked. “Who wants this child?”

Marak saw no child in the man’s possession. “I’m Marak Trin Tain,” he said, to have that clear. “I want this child for a woman who asked for her.”

“My wife is dead,” the man said, and Marak had no idea of his name, though sharing what they shared it seemed he ought to know that small fact.

“Do you want the child for yourself?” Marak asked him. “I haven’t come to take it, if you want it. But I’m telling you there’s one who does, desperately.”

“Is it my Norit?” the man shouted across the wind. “Is she the prophet we heard? Is it really Norit?”

“She is the prophet,” Marak said. “And she speaks well of you. And she misses Lelie.”

“I have a new wife,” the man said. “My Norit is dead.”

“She loves you,” Marak said to him, deciding he might feel sorry for this man, deciding that his rights here were limited and circumscribed by older ones. “She’s well. But she suffers.”

“Is she sane?” Shouting across the wind robbed the voice of inflection. It might have been an accusation. Or a heartfelt longing.

“Sane enough she guides us all,” he shouted back. “Sane enough to this hour, but her duty won’t bring her back, not likely, not if you’ve married again. Give her the child if she’s a trouble to you. If she isn’t, then be a father to her. And if you want Norit back—” He had no power to give Norit to anyone. “Come forward in the line and ask her for yourself.”

“I have my new wife,” the man answered him. He unfolded his robe and unskillfully managed his besha closer to Osan, to pass across a small bundle, a half-limp child who waked on being exposed to the blasting wind, and struggled fretfully.

Marak reached across and took it under the arms, a light weight, a girl, he thought, maybe about a year of age, maybe two. She seemed light for her size.

“Do you want to give her up?” Marak shouted at the father, at Norit’s husband. “Don’t do it if you don’t! I’m here to offer and ask, not to order! The Ila’s man came asking. Did you ever hear him?”

“I heard nothing,” the husband said back to him. “But Norit is mad. So Lelie may be. And my new wife doesn’t want her.”

“Then I’ll take her to her mother,” Marak said, and opened his robe and snugged the infant into that warm shelter. The baby fought him. He hugged her tightly, preventing her struggles. He feared even so that he had robbed the father, but if what the father said was so, maybe he had saved the child a warfare with a new wife, one that wanted no reminders of a marriage the father had not willingly left, a villager that would never reach such an accommodation as he and Hati had with Norit. “I’ll take care of her,” he said. “Shall I say anything to Norit?”

“She’s dead,” was all the husband would say, as Agi said, as everyone in the village might say.

“Antag!” Marak called out, gathering his companions, and rode forward with the storm at his back, on across the gap at which Tarsa lagged behind the next village. He felt obliged to explain himself; but he had no explanation that would make sense to strangers.

“We were looking for this baby,” he said, feeling that life squirm against him. The wind drowned its outcries and its fear. He was holding it too tightly, and eased his grip, and patted it inside his coat, trying to still its crying. Hercrying. Lelie had ceased to be an abstract question, and became a living distraction, a personal folly.

If he had been alone, he might have said to himself Tarsa was not all he wanted to find. Tarsa was not what he had looked for. But he had found Tarsa, all the same, and he had pursued a question which was not his question, and met a man he had never wanted to meet, and acquired an answer that had already cost a life.

And now if he did anything but go back to the Ila he risked more than himself, and he risked these men, and more. The squirming bundle against his side, trying to kick him, told him how much he had risked already, and reminded him there were other concerns besides his blood debt, and his mother, and his grief. He wanted no part of these concerns… if he had his own way he would hand the baby to Antag and keep going; and he could do that.