Hammerfall

It might be the bitter sea. Stars fell into that sea and extinguished themselves. Plumes of water and smoke went up and joined the clouds. The sun went down in sullen red, and more stars fell.

He remembered where they had to be. They had to reach Pori. He tried to tell Hati so, to be sure he remembered the truth, and had not come adrift in visions. There was water at Pori, water necessary to all these people, whose ranks marched on and on, stretching across a star-battered plain, whose dead lay in rows beside their road.

The priests changed off with other priests from time to time. He waked at such moments, and blinked at the priests, and wondered at the vision. Intermittently, too, the caravan suffered from the wind, which gusted, and blew red ropes of sand across his vision. The priests staggered, and sometimes jolted the litter. Lelie waked at one such jolt, frightened by the wind, hungry and out of sorts.

“Hush,” he said to her tear-stained face, and she knew his voice, and broke into a loud wail, in pain and crying for her mother. But Luz had her mother, and he could bring her to Norit, but he could not get Norit back… he failed in that, continually, and tried to comfort her.

But Lelie cried and snuffled against him, weak and miserable.

“Call Norit,” he said to the priest at his feet, wincing as Lelie hit his wound. But before the priest could decide to obey him, Lelie fell abruptly asleep, perhaps Luz’s work. Then he slid down into sleep, too, and that was the end of that.

When he next waked it was at the shift between bearers, and Lelie was still asleep, her spritelike face shaded by the aifad. The sun warming them in a clear sky.

It was afternoon, he decided. He tried to reckon where they were, and tried to fit an east direction into the angle of the distant ridge and the flat expanse of pitted sand. He could lift his head, he discovered. He moved a leg and a shoulder grown unbearably stiff with lying compressed between the litter poles, and found the pain of his side and his back was less, the swelling diminished.

The war of the makers for his life and health seemed won. And where were they? And how many days had it been? He began to know fear, and to care where he was. If it was not toward Pori, he thought, then he had to do something. He had to know.

“Where are we going?” he asked the man at his head, but, tilting his head, he saw only a back, and had no answer. Riders on beshti moved at the limits of his vision. That was as it should be.

He looked down past his feet at the priest carrying the litter, a strong man, a patient man. “I may be able to get up,” he said, under Lelie’s peacefully sleeping weight. “To ride, if not to walk. Stop.”

The priest stopped, and the pair carrying him drew aside from those riders immediately to the rear. They set the litter down. They were at the heart of the column, and beshti had to move around them, a tall shadow of legs and undersides as Marak shifted Lelie aside and tried to lift himself.

He could not quite sit up straightway. He gathered his breath and rolled onto a knee and both knees and his hands on the dusty sand, encumbered by the litter poles. Slowly then, in blood-stiffened clothing, he attempted to disengage his shirttail from under Lelie on the litter and get up. The priests’ belated help impeded as much as assisted him, and he shook off the offered arm, rested hands on his knee, shoved himself to his feet.

As he succeeded and dragged his shirttail free, Lelie waked, and sat up, too, rubbing her eyes with a bloody, grimy fist. He stood swaying on his feet in the passage of beshti on either hand—looked down at his little prize in numb curiosity, wondering what he was to do with her, and where Hati was.

Marak, his voices said, begi

He saw Lelie catch her balance, too, and sit afterward wide-eyed, her small mouth open in dazed startlement.

“It’s all right,” he told her: madness seemed to have grown in the child like a seed. “Your mama’s here. You’re all right.”

She cried. It was beyond him to pick her up. She reached up hands to be taken. It was the other priest who picked up the baby.

“She’s Norit’s,” Marak said. “My wife’s. Norit. Let the baby ride with her.” He had no idea where anyone was, but he wanted not to be left afoot. “Where’s my wife?”

They both, the one holding Lelie, and the other, looked at him as if they had seen the dead rise.

And perhaps, he thought, staggering into a first step, that was very nearly the case. He knew where east was. He knew that.

Then, arriving from behind, a rider shadowed them, and that was Hati, who slid down in a welter of windblown veils.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

“These men have blisters,” he said, meaning the priests: he had seen their hands. But he saw her face all exhausted and worried, too, and added, “I’m all right, wife. Trust my judgment. I’m all right.”

Hati did not embrace him, not in front of strangers and priests, but she came and put an arm about him, guiding him along with the walkers, leading her besha with the other hand. Bosginde, one of the freedmen, had ridden near, too. “Get Osan,” Hati ordered him, looking up. “My husband will ride now.”

Bosginde left in haste, applying the quirt, and still the riders streamed past.

“Someone may have to put me up,” he admitted to Hati, for her alone, and again, having become sane again, saw something was clearly different about the company in which they rode. Around them were more riders, dark-clothed riders. Tribesmen. He had not been dreaming that.

And he stumbled, trying to walk.

“I don’t think I can hold on,” he said.

“Someone will help you,” she said. Her voice was tense. Her hand on his arm was gentle and anxious. She had changed her clothes for the dark-striped robes of her own tribe, and her arms flashed with gold and honor. “I thought you might die in spite of the makers.”

“Or to spite them.” It was a bad joke. He saw that in Hati’s worried face. And among the accumulated confusion in the world he was unsure how much time had passed. “The makers won’t let me die. Last night, it seemed a disadvantage. But I’m improving fast. I’ll ride. Where are we?”

“Two days from where you found us.”

“Toward Pori.”

“Toward Pori,” she confirmed, and relieved his anxiety on that score, at least.

“The tribes are here.” It was assuredly the Ila’s caravan. Bosginde was here. He saw beasts he knew. His memory could not account for her gold and her change of robes. He himself stood in changed clothing, a loose shirt, trousers not tucked into the boots… they tagged loose about his ankles, and blew in the wind. “The Keran have joined the camp?”

“When you were shot. The Haga came in. They were angry because the Ila’s men couldn’t protect the camp. Then Aigyan heard the Haga were here, so he came, in the storm and all, and he and Menditak talked. Then they got to arguing with the Ila’s captain, and they got hot, but I said they were all fools.”

He could imagine the scene. Hati would say that. And Memnanan, who was not a fool, and Aigyan and Menditak, had all been in one council, while Hati had her say.

“Menditak gave you a gift,” Hati said, and let him go to pull rolled cloth down from her saddle ties. She shook it out, a coat of Haga colors, and held it out for him, while beshti passed them and passersby, the Ila’s servants, gazedat this private proceedings. He put it on, a heavy, warm coat, and was troubled about what it said, a declaration of tribal colors; but before he could half think the thought, Hati flung an aifad about his neck, a fine one, of Keran colors. “Aigyan’s gift,” she said.

They marked him with both sets of colors. It was without precedent that the tribes should mix camp with each other, let alone with the Ila’s men, the enemy, the lifelong enemy. But so was this journey without precedent. So was the Ila’s presence among the tribes unprecedented.