Chapter Ten
A quiet gathering sees Braylon’s body laid to rest in the gloomy afternoon. Warriors in ceremonial cloaks lower the enwrapped form into the slender trench dug for a grave, then solemnly take up shovels and cover him away. The men Braylon worked and fought with stand to one side, and his friends from the old village occupy the other. Keslin hovers around, working himself up to the task of speaking over the deceased, as he does for all those slain in action. His old, arthritic knuckles are swollen and sore from laying into the trespassers and he fumbles with the scrap of notes he’s written for the occasion.
“Friends and fellow soldiers,” his recital begins, “here we see a brave young man off to the safe refuge of the Beyond. Braylon gave his life protecting others, and now will be safeguarded himself, for all time.” Keslin drones on mournfully about bravery and honor as eddies of gray drizzle swirl around them.
Jeneth swaddles Mariset more tightly in her blanket and bounces her impatiently as Keslin speaks, a deep uneasiness mounting inside her. She wants to leave, to run back to her cabin, bar the door, and huddle inside with Mariset and never come out again. Usually it is a joy to see her old friends, but as they stand in a crooked line around Braylon’s grave she finds she can barely look at them. It is not the cheerful reunion she had longed for, what with one of their lot dead and two others gone missing.
Keslin finishes his remarks with gratitude for the warrior class and a timeworn promise to defend the Temple, and establishes that Braylon’s valor will never be forgotten. To those who knew him well, they sound like empty words.
“Have you heard anything about Lia and Jack?” Haylen asks quietly as the funeral disbands.
“Same as you’ve probably heard,” Jeneth says. “Missing is all I know.” Eriem gives her a tight squeeze and a peck on the cheek, then saunters off to chat with the men in his brigade.
“I heard they’re dead,” Haylen says soberly. “It’s what everyone is saying.”
“Don’t believe everything that goes around.”
“If they’re not dead, where are they? Why don’t they come back?”
“I don’t know, Haylen. Maybe they’re lost.”
Jeneth swallows hard and fights the urge to tell Haylen everything she knows about that night. The warriors know the truth and Eriem has more than hinted at it. Jack and Lia have run, she knows, and abandoned her and everyone else. Some say they’re dead, killed by the spies that got Braylon. Others spread much darker rumors that they were in league with these intruders, and perhaps helped them gain access to the Temple’s secrets. Every person she talks with offers a different story, and the official line from the upper echelons has changed several times in the telling. They have run, this much she believes, but why they would do such a thing eludes her. Just when they were starting to find happiness here.
“Calyn thinks those men had something to do with it. She thinks they stole them away to teach them spywork. Says they’re probably living with a band of thieves in the forest by now.”
“Well… maybe…”
William has been listening, and he leans in to offer his own twist. “They fell in the ocean trying to save Braylon. It’s the only thing that makes sense. That’s why there’s no bodies.”
“Wait, they were both trying to save Braylon?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Jeneth sighs and looks around for Eriem, still carrying on with his mates. A triad of Temple girls studies Jeneth and her friends skeptically. Jeneth makes eye contact with one of them, and the girl looks quickly away. She has noticed these surreptitious little glances plenty in the last couple of days. They look at Jeneth like they know something about her, something they don’t like.
“Eriem,” she calls, “are you ready?”
“Just about, hold on.”
“I think they escaped,” says Aiden. “I think they saw a chance to run and they took it.”
“Why would they run away and leave us?” Haylen asks, saddened by the thought.
“Wouldn’t you have run, if you could’ve?”
“No. All my friends are here.”
“Well…”
Haylen gasps and tugs on Jeneth’s dress. “What if we helped ‘em escape?”
“Haylen, keep your voice down,” she hisses. “How? How could we have helped them?”
“That necklace. Maybe it meant something secret. Maybe the spies gave it to them.”
“Creston gave it to him, he’s not a spy.”
They turn and look at Creston.
“I made it in the shop,” he says thinly. “He gave it to Lia?”
The Temple girls are watching them again, talking under their breath to each other. Jeneth strides over to Eriem and pulls his arm.
“The baby’s cold. We have to go.”
“All right.” He bristles at her touch and says his farewells all around. “Let’s go, then.”
Jeneth coddles Mariset against the cold and they start their long, silent walk back to their pretty little cottage on the hillside.
A cannon burst of thunder rumbles over the coast and fat, heavy raindrops plunk down all around. The tribe falls back to their lean-to and starts collecting their scant belongings, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the ridgeline for any sign of Cirune and Halis. They fled north, but Jack and the others are grimly aware that they are not gone, that it is not safe to stay here.
Jack climbs back through the jumble of iron beams that encase the fallen tribesman. He hefts the dead body over his shoulder and steadily works his way back out and carries him back to the shelter. There is no time to bury him. They perform a brief, woeful ceremony and cremate him on the remains of the dying bonfire.
Lia and the rest of the women set about doctoring the injured men. She wraps Jack’s wolf-bitten forearm with hastily cut strips of hide, then redresses the wound on his chest, and he, in turn, fixes the failing bandage on her shoulder.
“Tah tevra ota desna diwaa tondessa, eyah?” Sajiress says to them. He touches Jack and Lia on the shoulder then gestures around to the rest of the tribe. “Diwaa mah ton,” he says, and points to the far side of the valley.
“He wants us to go with them?” asks Lia.
“I think so,” says Jack, turning to Sajiress. “Yeah, we’ll go. For a little while.” They don’t have many other options, he figures, and the horizon is sizzling with lightning from the coming storm.
When their weapons, food, and rudimentary tools are stowed away for travel, they set off in the opposite direction of the fleeing Nezra horsemen. They help Jack and Lia along as fellow travelers, and without any scorn or ill will that the two led such an enemy their way. The men especially seem livened by their encounter.
They seem a young tribe. Sajiress looks the eldest, and his face has only just begun creasing with age.
They emerge from the valley drenched through. Their fur and hide clothing sticks to their skin and makes progress sluggish. The constant threat of ambush slows them further and they are at least thankful that the rainfall provides some concealment of their movements. When they reach the top of the far ridge they fall in line and start to hike inland. The children scamper through the rain like overgrown chipmunks. Here is just another day for them, situated in the midst of a seemingly endless arrangement of tribulations.
Lia presses against Jack and clutches their pack tightly to her chest as they go, keeping a keen eye on the underbrush for any sudden motion. They don’t make much distance before one of the tribesman calls to Jack and points off with his spear toward a line of trees to the south, with a brown-speckled and sad-looking horse sheltered underneath. He looks fit, save for the arrow sticking out of his hindquarters.
Jack signals to Sajiress and sets off, walking casually through the downpour.
“Can we get him?” Lia asks with tempered optimism.
“Maybe. Try going down there, and if he comes that way just take a step or two toward him. I’ll try to get around closer.”
She walks to the other side of the tree line, where a stretch of open land would give a quick retreat if the horse decides to bolt. Jack closes in slowly from his left side, taking only a few steps at a time so as not to startle him. The horse looks at him, then looks away. Jack advances a few steps and slaps his hands against his thighs, but the sound is lost in the rain. He circles around and advances a touch more. The horse shuffles a bit and eyes him warily. Jack recognizes the spots on his coat. He’s ridden this one before.
“Balazir,” he calls out, “come here, boy.” Balazir neighs and works himself deeper under the tree cover. “Come here, Balazir, I won’t hurt you.” Jack steps forward and the horse holds his ground, looking back at him with one big liquid eye. Slowly, Balazir turns his head and faces Jack fully, then starts to amble toward him. Jack beckons him forward and grasps onto his reins and Balazir dips his head and snorts. “You’re gonna be okay, boy” he soothes, and runs a hand down Balazir’s soaking mane. He studies the arrow and figures it will be a chore to remove, and leaves it be until they’ve made their escape.
The tribe has been transfixed watching him charm the elegant creature. They’ve seen negligible few of them in their days, making their tentative migrations back to the blossoming central pasturelands, and have never known their true worth. Balazir shies from them and they from him. Jack leads him on, with Lia and Sajiress at his side, and they press through the tall grass on their way to the shelter of the forest canopy.
“You can’t hide from them forever,” says Keslin.
Arana leans against a ledge on the far wall of his parlor and peers out the thin vertical window. The grounds look sullen and gray.
“What are they saying?”
“They need you to comfort them. We’ve told them everything is fine. They want to hear it from you.”
“And what should I tell them? That I’ve failed?”
“You’ve not failed.”
“Two men violate our home… our Temple, Keslin, that I’ve been sworn to protect. And then two of our own escape and there is nothing that I can do.”
“They are not our own.”
“Not anymore.”
“Not ever. They’re forest trash who were given a chance at happiness and spit it back in our faces.”
Arana scratches his fingers through his hair and rubs his knuckles into the dark circles under his eyes. His face is paling and gaunt.
“I think we’ve been much too kind in our approach,” Keslin presses. “What is it you were trying to do the other day? With the prisoners? Were you trying to put them in a trance, or something?”
Arana says nothing. He walks across the parlor, absently flipping a smoothworn coin he’s plucked from a display on the ledge, troubled by the first real turbulence he’s experienced during a life of tranquility.
Keslin watches him eagerly. “I think it’s time to try something new.”
“We’ve beaten them nearly to death, what more can we do?”
“Follow me,” Keslin says. “I think we might get them to talk yet.”
He guides Arana through the halls of the immense Temple like a father leading a son to his first day of lessons. Arana tightens whenever they pass a line of workers moving to their stations or sentries making their rounds. He forces as much strength as he can manage as he passes them, and they meet his eyes tensely and nod back, following vacantly the motions of old allegiance.
In the confined chamber outside the underground keep, a terrified young boy sits on the floor and traces figures on the ground with his fingers. His lower lip is wet with saliva and he has no earthly notion of how much danger he is in. Two warriors stand to either side of him, their arms crossed, and they straighten when Keslin and their King approach the landing.
“What is this?”
“Just wait.”
“Are you going to hurt him?”
“Of course not,” Keslin says, a touch offended. “We just want them to think we might, since they don’t seem to care about themselves.” He walks over and lowers himself to the ground in front of the boy, his arthritic bones cracking as he settles. “Hello.”
The boy looks up vacuously and studies the gnarled old man before him.
“Do you like play at make believe?” Keslin asks.
“… yes.”
“We’re going to play a game, okay?”
The boy studies him further, with the speed and demeanor of a tortoise.
“It might be… a scary game. But you’re going to be fine, okay?”
The boy goes back to his figures.
Keslin grunts as he rises, then reaches a hand down to the boy and they enter the keep. The boy startles when he sees the sagging forms shackled to the wall, covered with raw wounds, and he turns and tries to pull away and run back to the antechamber. Keslin tightens his knotty hand around the boy’s and drags him forward. Arana hovers at the door and looks on.
Renning averts his eye and feigns unconsciousness as he hears them draw near, and Ethan hangs perfectly limp beside him.
“Time to wake up,” Keslin says.
Ethan does not stir. Keslin swings his arm crookedly through the air and cuffs him across the jaw. His head jerks stiffly to the side and the rigor mortis fastens it in that oblique position. Keslin lays a palm across his cheek.
“Cold,” he says. “Well, that leaves you, friend.”
He wheels on Renning, who slumps against the wall looking starved and feverish. His scarred body has been lanced so thoroughly that little untouched flesh remains to be abused.
In the far reaches of the keep a crew of workers mixes a fresh batch of mortar in an iron kettle. The first few rows of stone are already laid and two elder craftsmen shuffle and bend down to trowel off the excess, leaving neat, even lines between the blocks. The craftsmen and crew take sly glances at this new and aberrant undertaking, murmuring to each other in the hushed tones of conversing mourners.
“I think you’re going to tell us where you’re from.”
Renning doesn’t budge. He hangs limp and waits for a burning iron to be thrust at him, but it does not come. He hears rustling fabric and a quiet scraping, then a sound pierces the musty cellar that makes him cast off his pretense of slumber—the child screams. He throws his eyes wide open and there before him Keslin holds a curved silver blade up against the little boy’s gullet.
“You son of a bitch, you wouldn’t dare.”
Keslin’s face is vacant as he digs the sharp tip into the tender skin of the child’s neck, drawing a small rivulet of blood and another scream of panic. Arana fidgets anxiously and the warriors around him watch the event straight-faced.
“Let him go,” Renning pleads, “he’s a child.”
“Tell me what I want to know.” He presses the knife a touch deeper and the boy jolts rigid in his arms.
“Please. Please, don’t do this—”
“Where are you from?”
Renning chokes and looks on helplessly.
Keslin twists the boy’s head, gripping him by a fistful of hair, and whispers into his ear. “Ask this man where he’s from.” The boy sucks air frantically and looks from one cold face to another. “If you want to live, ask this man where he is from.”
“Wh… where…” he wheezes, and then spasms with fear and his throat closes up.
Keslin tightens his arm and coils the boy closer to him, serpentine, and feints with his knife hand. Renning twists and contorts and says nothing.
“I’ll leave you to think on it. I’m sure you don’t want this boy’s blood on your hands.” He turns back to the small audience that has watched his performance and beckons them forward. “Get this corpse out of here. And lock the boy in his place.”
They hike until the rain forces them to stop, then make a fireless camp under some crudely lashed thatching that provides meager cover from the downpour. Despite being waterlogged and uprooted, the tribe seems not the least bit inconvenienced. They chatter on in their peculiar tongue and share sun-dried meat with Jack and Lia.
With Halis and Cirune on the loose, the men arrange to guard the camp through the night, dividing into shifts and pacing anxiously along the perimeter. Jack takes up arms and tries to join them, but after much insistence that he sleep he grudgingly obliges. He and Sajiress crouch down under their makeshift awning and attempt a conversation. With silly gestures and awkward pantomimes not befitting the tone of the subject, Sajiress lays out the story of how his people came to be attacked by the Nezra.
They had separated only briefly, from what Jack and Lia can glean—a small group of adults and only several children had gone foraging on their own, and pushed farther into new territory than they had intended. Sajiress inscribes their movements on the muddy ground, using rocks and sticks as stand-ins. He points to Balazir, standing glumly in the rain, telling how they were attacked by men who rode horses, and he mimics the action foolishly.
“Denok,” he says, touching the boots that Jack and Lia wear, “kine des.”
Jack understands now why they were so leery when he and Lia first approached—they wear the boots of murderers.
A woman named Sika watches and nods along with Sajiress’s telling, for it seems she was the only living witness to the encounter. She had strayed off on her own and returned just as they were hefting the children away, leaving a burning pile of corpses behind.
Sika can barely speak when the story is finished. Sajiress sits back and folds his hands across his belly and looks keenly at Jack and Lia. He nods to them—it is their turn.
They take one deep breath apiece then launch into their tale. Though it rends old scar tissue fresh again, they tell every bloody detail, completing each other’s thoughts and acting out the details along the way. They conclude with their escape from the Temple, represented by a skull-sized rock. Jack is a small gray pebble and Lia is a little pine cone, and they puppeteer themselves across the muddy ground toward the scattering of rocks that Sajiress has designated as his tribe.
They wipe the mud on their soaked clothes and sit shivering in the cold rain. The tribe encircles them and lays their hands all about them in a strange and profound embrace.
Sajiress pitches forward, full of fire and spite, and takes up the various rocky representations of his tribe and of Jack and Lia, and arranges them in a line before the Temple rock. He advances them forward and plays out a miniature assault on the Temple.
“Tah eh lah,” he asserts, “tevra e’stranna ton, de Temple, eyah, lah sikelern d’ton.”
“No,” Jack says sternly. He lifts the Temple rock and crashes it down on Sajiress’s pebble army, splattering mud on their faces. “No.”
Sajiress ruminates on this, staring at the mess they’ve created. “Enah? No?”
Jack shakes his head. “No. I’m sorry.”
Sajiress accepts this reluctantly and they sit in reflective silence. The patter of raindrops dwindles and slows to a stop. Lia slicks the water off her skin and scampers over to Balazir and whispers to him sweetly. He chuffs and lowers his head, eyes glistening.
“Can we fix him now?” she asks.
The arrow is still lodged in his left haunch. Jack has been dreading this—there is no good way to go about it. “I guess we better, before it gets too dark.”
He stands up on tired feet and solicits the others for help. They have several lengths of hemp rope stowed with their belongings and Jack takes these out and loops them together to make a crude kick-rope to hobble Balazir’s legs.
“Oh, he’s not gonna like this,” Jack warns, and hands the ropes to the rugged crew that has gathered to help him. They hold the lines with two or three on each strand, and Balazir begins to stir nervously. Jack grabs the flint and rod out of his pack and gets one of the pitched arrows from Sajiress, then sparks the tip and holds his hunting knife in the dull flame.
“Okay,” he tells Lia, “I’m going to work this in to give you some room, and you’re going to pull the arrow out.”
“I am?”
“You’ll be fine. He’s going to struggle, but just… go easy.”
He shoos everyone away from the back of the horse and he and Lia take up their positions by the left flank. He shimmies the tip of the blade in and widens the puncture wound just a touch, and Balazir neighs uneasily and bucks against the ropes.
“Slowly,” he says, “go ahead and pull it out.”
She rocks the arrow shaft as gently as she can manage and starts to dislodge it from the sinewy muscle. Balazir tries frantically to kicks his legs out and everyone startles for an instant before bearing down on the ropes to steady him.
“It’s okay, go again.”
Lia grasps it again and wiggles it loose, then extracts the stony tip and throws it on the ground. Jack pulls his blade back and lets the wound close up on itself. Balazir bucks a couple times then settles as everyone backs off. They let down the ropes. He clips away nervously and Jack holds crisp on his lead. He and Lia pet the horse’s broad neck and shoulders, whispering soft reassurances into his ears.
“It’ll have to do,” he says, inspecting their shoddy surgery. The arrow is gone, at least, and it could have cut much deeper. He leads him on a short walk to let him drink and graze, then ties him back up for the night.
“Think they’re watching us?” Lia asks as they walk back to the camp.
Jack sighs a heavy breath and shakes his head. “I don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Maybe we should stay with them for a while.”
“They can’t protect us forever. I don’t want to cause them more trouble.”
Lia nods and looks at the entangled pile of sleeping bodies nestled under the sloping thatchwork.
“We’ll go before sunrise,” says Jack. “Try to get ahead of them.”
They settle into the pile themselves, hoping to get some sleep before they strike out again. The rain abates for the rest of the night and the woods are quiet, save for the occasional whispering of the spearmen walking their slow circuit around the camp. In the lonesome hours of early morning, Jack rises and gets his pack in order. Lia is sleeping so still and peaceful that he hates to wake her, but he leans down and taps her shoulder anyway.
“Let’s go,” he whispers.
“Hurrama… hmm…”
“Lia, wake up.”
“Uhn… oh… I’m awake.”
She unknots herself from the slumbering hive and takes dizzy, loping steps across the mud to help Jack finish saddling Balazir. Stray droplets of accumulated rainwater from the canopy drip all around and one catches Lia on the back of her neck and sends a shiver down the soft indentation of her spine.
There are no stars in the sky and the waxing moon is as faint as a sandworn etching. Sajiress walks the night shift, his feet looking like they wear shoes of mud. He breaks away when he sees the young strangers stirring in the camp and goes to see them off, taking up a bundle of provisions he’s laid for them—some food, an assortment of arrows, a fur shawl, and some hide straps to bandage their bites and scratches.
“Thank you,” they say, accepting the goods. Jack fishes out one of his knives, the kitchen knife that Lia swiped, and offers it as a gift—they have nothing else to give.
“Tanaa.” Sajiress rubs his thumb along the blade. “Lah tevra ota granlan dar’mont. Tah adanna serchess, en vei d’sonna.” He bends to the ground and draws out a jagged line, pointing off to the mountain as he does so.
Jack fishes around in the pack for their map and he unfolds it carefully and holds it before Sajiress. He points to the muddy contours drawn on the ground, then runs his finger along the matching topography on the map. Sajiress works it over with squinted eyes, then points to a fork between two rivers, just on the other side of the low ranges.
“Granlan,” he says. “Tevra diwaa?”
Jack smiles and shakes his head.
“Lah kine. E’caraan.” Sajiress repeats their names again, mostly to himself, and they manage some sort of awkward farewell. He turns and paces off to his patrol.
Jack unties Balazir then slips a muddy boot into the stirrup. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
He hoists her up and they scoot around for a moment, getting situated. Lia pulls the fur snug around her shoulders and kisses her little cosmic charm, and Jack hooks his bow onto the saddle and delivers just a touch of pressure with his heels and Balazir livens and rambles forward.
Halis slides the scope back into its pouch and creeps to the clearing off yonder where the horses are tied and his partner lay sleeping
“They’re moving. And they’ve got our horse.” His words are warbly and salivating through a half-mouth of teeth.
Cirune grumbles and rolls to his side and gets his good leg under him to stand on. He suffered his own crude operation last night—Halis digging hooked fingers into his thigh to pull out the stone fragments embedded therein. His face tightens with deep creases as he puts weight on it, and he takes a stiff and painful walk to his horse and rests against its heaving side.
“Could use a hand here.”
Halis glares back at Cirune, then throws his pack over his shoulder and goes over and shoves him up onto his saddle. He studies Cirune’s torn leg and the busted, skittish horses. They’ve no arrows and the mongrels are dead.
“Can you ride?”
“Yeah, think so,” Cirune says. “Let’s get this over quick.”
“The boy has arrows and a fast horse. There’ll be nothing quick about it.”
“What?”
“We’ll track them,” says Halis, keeping his scope at hand. “There’s better places they could’ve run. They’ve got somewhere in mind… and we’re going to find it out.”