‘Jezro!’ Warkannan called. ‘Let me take those saddlebags for you.’
‘No. You’re as tired as I am.’
Stubborn bastard! Warkannan thought. Arguing would be useless, but he could feel rather than hear one of the males behind him booming. He must have been speaking to the female about Jezro’s bad leg, because she called a halt, then came trotting back along the line, swinging her lightwands into everyone’s cursing faces. She considered Jezro for a moment, then filled her throat sac and – as far as Warkannan could tell – began giving orders. One of the males first haunched, then bent his front legs and knelt.
‘Sit,’ the female said, pointing to the khan. ‘Ride.’
‘Daccor,’ Jezro said. ‘I’m tired enough to take you up on that.’
Jezro handed Warkannan the reins of his horse, then studied the ChaMeech’s ample back. Once he found some sort of seat among the sacks and bundles, the male lumbered to his feet, and their strange caravan travelled on. The tunnel was leading them north-east, as closely as Warkannan could reckon, but he soon lost track of distances. He only knew that he was stumbling weary from walking on rock and determined not to show it.
After some hours the view ahead brightened. Dawn was breaking, and the tunnel suddenly debouched onto a long slope down. Loose gravel marked a path, but to either side maroon shrubs and brushy red grasses covered the hill. As the light turned silver, Warkannan could see what lay at the bottom of the gentle slope. A vast uneven plateau stretched north and south beyond the limits of his sight. To the east, however, the mesa seemed to drop away after a few miles. Beyond, at the eastern horizon, mountains rose, capped with white, shadowy in the dawn haze.
Up at the head of the line, the lavender female waved, pointed, and called back. ‘Not long now! Water here soon.’
They made their way down the gravelled slope to the flat, where scrub plants gave way to lush purple grass on a plain dotted with boulders and broken rock. Water gleamed in a precisely straight canal, running west to east across the plateau. At first Warkannan thought the water filthy and spoiled, because it appeared black; then he realized that the canal had been lined with aggregate, pebbles bound together by some black material. After everyone had drunk their fill, the lavender female trotted up to them. ‘See.’ She pointed straight east. ‘Village. We go-now.’ About half a mile away stood irregular domes of grey and reddish brown. From his distance Warkannan thought them boulders, but as they came closer, he realized that they were structures made out of sticks, rushes, and vines, about twenty of them arranged in a rough circle.
Once they reached the village, Warkannan could get a good look at them. They were about forty feet in diameter, roughly so thanks to their irregular shapes. The builders had stuffed the cracks between their various components with leaves and dead grass, which hung loose by the handful where they weren’t plastered over with a strange greyish substance – either paint or mud, Warkannan wasn’t sure which. As they passed the domes, heading for another canal, other ChaMeech came hurrying out to take a look at them. Their throat sacs pulsed, and their lips moved in seeming silence – everyone’s talking at once, Warkannan thought. We’re the latest nine days’ wonder around here.
Yet no one followed them as they left the village behind. Down near the canal stood one last dome, about half the size of those in the village. When they reached it, the female called for the halt. She walked back to Warkannan and Jezro, then pointed at the door.
‘Home,’ she said. ‘Rest now.’
Warkannan and Jezro unloaded their horses. The female refused to let them take the horses to water or tether them out, but with gestures she let them know that she’d do both. Two of the males came forward with spears and herded them into the doorway.
‘Oh God!’ Jezro muttered. ‘The stink in here!’
Warkannan nodded; he was too close to choking to speak. The air smelled of mildew and mould, spoiled food, rancid grease, and urine. The only flooring was soft dirt, scattered with things that he decided not to identify. The faintness of the light coming through narrow slits of windows made them easier to ignore. As they stepped inside, their feet sank into the floor.
‘This is no way to treat prisoners,’ Jezro said. ‘This is a bad place.’
‘Bad?’ the female said.
‘It stinks. Smells bad. Disgusting.’
‘Ah. I see-now. You want make own marks. All right to do that.’
‘No!’ Jezro snapped. ‘I do not want to add my own piss to the ground. I want a place that doesn’t stink at all.’
‘None. Inside.’ She waved a pseudo-hand, and the males stepped forward, brandishing spears.
Fortunately the worst stink hung like a curtain right inside the door. By going all the way across to a rank of window-slits, they found breathable air and bare ground that seemed clean enough to lay their gear upon. With a weary sigh Jezro sat down on his saddle.
‘I am sorely tempted,’ the khan said, ‘to do as the male ChaMeech do here in their lovely accommodations. Pissing all over the door just seems polite, somehow.’
‘Go ahead,’ Warkannan said, grinning. ‘You’re the commanding officer, so it’s your job.’
Jezro made an obscene gesture in his direction.
‘Well,’ Warkannan said, ‘we’ll have to make some provision for a latrine. Dig one, I guess.’
‘Hah! Since I’m in command, that’s your job, soldier! I just hope that Hassan makes it back to civilization safely, and that he gets his narrow arse back out here fast. Along with a couple of cavalry companies, preferably.’
By standing on his toes Warkannan could see out of the window. Beyond the hut lay a field of purple grass that stretched to a stand of trees, apparently planted by design, as each maroon trunk stood at the same distance from its neighbours. Beyond them a broad canal ran dead straight from the north to the south. As he watched, a pair of ChaMeech males, wearing dirty yellow kilts and armed with spears, walked into his field of vision, turned to face the hut, and haunched.
‘Guards,’ Warkannan said. ‘I don’t think we’ll be able to escape.’
‘I figured that,’ Jezro said. ‘Well, at least we can talk at a normal level in here.’
‘True. We can start planning our strategy.’
‘Strategy?’
‘For the civil war. The one we’re going to fight once we get back home.’
‘Like a shen with a bone, that’s you.’ Jezro shook his head in mock despair. ‘But before you start in on me, let’s get some sleep. Last night was just a little too eventful for my tastes.’
Warkannan and Jezro had just reached their new prison when Zayn arrived at the old. After he brought the horses up to the surface, he paused and let the red hills catch his gaze. He and Ammadin stood staring at the tip-tilted layers of stone, the arches, the caves, the vast cliff faces rising among the sculpted pillars and lacy columns to their strangely flat crests. Loy led her horse up to join them, then pointed at the hills.
‘They’re called traps,’ Loy said. ‘The N’Dosha Traps.’
‘I’ve never seen hills like that,’ Zayn said.
‘They’re not exactly hills, is why. A long time ago this region was flooded with lava, and as it cooled, the flood cracked into chunks. Wind and water have done the rest. The Settlers left us their analysis of the terrain, which is how I know.’
‘A volcano, you mean?’ Ammadin put in.
‘Not exactly. The explosion was supposed to have been so violent that it never formed a mountain, just some enormous crack or crater in the ground. The pale reddish stone is something called tufa, and those black streaks are basalt. They’ve formed layers because there was more than one eruption. But the last one was something like thirty million years ago.’
‘In that case,’ Zayn said, ‘I won’t worry about another one. I’m going to take a look around and see if I can find out what happened to the khan and Idres.’
The trampled grass, beaten down to bare soil in places, told him that until
recently a fairly large number of sapients had camped outside the white building, along with two horses, who had left reasonably fresh evidence behind them. He found as well tracks heading east, Chof feet and the occasional hoofprint, indicating that Chof guards had walked before and behind the two horses. Ammadin followed him when he jogged over to the white cube of a building. He leaned into a window and looked through the shadows inside.
‘The place is empty,’ Zayn said. ‘I can see a piece of rushi in the corner, though. I wonder if they left us a note?’
‘It’s worth checking.’
At the closed door Ammadin said one word in Tekspeak – it sounded enough like Hirl-Onglay that Zayn could guess that she was saying ‘open’, especially when the door slid back into a channel in the wall. Zayn hurried in, retrieved the rushi, and trotted back out again.
‘Jezro’s handwriting, all right,’ he told Ammadin. ‘They were here until last night.’ He read on further, then laughed aloud before he could stop himself.
‘What?’ Ammadin said.
‘Sorry. It says, “All right, Hassan, I want my money back. I’ve been thinking about all those bets you won. What did you do? Have every book on chess ever written crammed into your damned memory?”’ Zayn glanced at Ammadin. ‘We used to bet on chess, you see, back in the officers’ common room, and I always won. Jezro’s right, of course. I did memorize books, and I could remember every move my opponents had made in other matches, too, so I could predict how they were likely to move.’
Ammadin was looking at him as if she thought he’d gone mad.
‘Well,’ Zayn went on, ‘no one but Jezro could have written this, except maybe Idres, but either way, it has to be genuine.’
‘All right, fine. But this chess – it’s some kind of a game?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I forgot you wouldn’t know.’
Near the entrance to the tunnel system, Water Woman stood talking with Loy and the male, a large fellow, so dark a grey that at times he seemed ebony-black, who led the spear servants. The two Chof were waving their pseudo-hands and booming at one another while Loy mostly listened. Eventually Loy left them with a shake of her head and joined the other two H’mai.
‘Could you understand any of that?’ Ammadin said.
‘No, but Water Woman translated now and then. Stronghunter Man – he’s the leader of the Chur – wants to march over the hills and burn down Herbgather Woman’s village. I guess it’s not all that far away, and he suspects that the hostages have been taken there.’
‘Who’s winning?’ Zayn said.
‘Water Woman, of course. She’s allowing Stronghunter Man to argue for the sake of his morale, but he’ll follow her orders. He has to. She’s true Chiri Michi, and he pledged his loyalty to her.’
‘Is Stronghunter Man a Chur Vocho?’ Zayn said.
‘He must be,’ Loy said. ‘He’s obviously her second in command.’
Once she’d won the argument, Water Woman rounded up H’mai and Chof alike. She appeared to be looking for some particular quality in a campsite, because she led her entire retinue to the white building, glanced in, led them away again, walked round the grassy field in front of it, then set out back west. Some hundred yards away she found a stream, thrummed once, and sat down, haunching.
‘Loy Sorcerer, Ammadin Witchwoman, Zayn Recaller,’ she called out. ‘Come sit with me. My servants bring-next your horses to water.’
Stronghunter Man himself took their horses, unsaddled the riding mounts, unloaded the pack horse, then led them behind the white building, where a stream ran. Zayn was impressed with how easily he managed the buckles despite having only two fingers and two thumbs to work with. The other males and the grey servants made camp by unloading their assorted bags and packs and strewing them across the grass.
‘I be sorry, Zayn,’ Water Woman said. ‘I hope-then your friends, they be-now here, but Herbgather Woman take-then them somewhere, maybe her village maybe not.’
‘She was probably afraid we’d rescue them by force.’
‘Yes, that be true. Stronghunter Man say-just-then the same thing. There be more of us, we have better weapons, especially Loy Sorcerer. That gun be the kind of weapon Herbgather Woman want us to get from Sibyl, but Sibyl say-over-and-over that she have no weapons to give anyone.’
‘Those guns would defend you against the Kazraks, all right,’ Zayn said. ‘Our cavalry couldn’t stand against them.’
‘No, no, no, not for Karshaks. Herbgather Woman fear Karshaks, yes, we all fear Karshaks, but she want-not weapons for killing them.’
‘What?’ Loy broke in. ‘Then what does she want them for?’
‘Birds. I tell-not you? I be sorry. Everything be awful, all this argue argue argue! I have-not power to think clearly. But she want-now to kill all the birds, because she think that then more of our children be safe, the children who come up on shores where we be-not, that is. If they live to cross the beaches, maybe they find us. This be what she say, anyway.’
‘Oh good god!’ Loy rolled her eyes heavenward. ‘She wants to kill every bird on this land mass?’
‘No, not every bird, just kri altri. They be the kind of bird who eat our children.’
‘And you don’t want to kill them?’
‘I be torn. I want-always the children to be safe. But if our men, they get-soon those guns, who be safe then? They argue, they use guns on each other. Evil evil thing. Bad enough they fight-all-time with spears. And then, I think, the birds, they have the right to live. They eat many nasty things, like poison squeakers that attack-sometimes Chof. I want-not destroy all of them. If the coasts be-still-now ours, we have power to defend the children, we need-not guns. Our men wave spears, kill maybe one or two birds, and the rest stay-then up high and kill-not our children.’
‘But you don’t have the coasts,’ Ammadin said.
‘No, we have not the coasts. So, Herbgather Woman speak-then about killing birds, but I wonder-then and I wonder-now, too. If her men they get those guns, what they do-next? My men, they have-not guns. She talk-always of children. All Chof, both Chur and Chiri, talk-always of children. We do-must this, do-must that, all for the children. But we talk-sometimes of children and do-next things for another reason. You see?’
‘Oh yes,’ Loy said. ‘My people have been known to use exactly the same tactic.’
‘So, Herbgather Woman claim they smash-already all the eggs they find, but kri altri, they make-always their nests up high in rocks, where Chof go-not easily. How many she smash-really, I wonder?’ Water Woman lowered her head and looked round the circle of H’mai, inviting comment.
‘Those aren’t the birds we call cranes, are they?’ Zayn said. ‘The grey birds who fish in the Mistlands?’
‘No, those be kri ashkamik.’
‘Good. Cranes are my spirit animal.’
Ammadin suddenly laughed. ‘You really are a comnee man now, aren’t you?’
Zayn started to make some joke, then remembered that he’d broken Bane. He forced out a smile and paid strict attention to the conversation around him.
‘I don’t understand,’ Loy was saying. ‘If Sibyl really doesn’t have any guns, then why not take Herbgather Woman there and let her see for herself?’
Water Woman’s throat sac swelled and turned not gold but a pale grey. She made a small rumbling sound, looked at the ground, then at the sky, rumbled again.
‘Something else is going on, isn’t it?’ Loy, ruthless, continued. ‘You don’t want her to have access to Sibyl.’
Water Woman deflated her throat sac with a long, sad-sounding hiss. ‘You be too smart, Loy Sorcerer,’ she said at last. ‘Our Great Mother, she be-now old. I want to be the next Great Mother. Herbgather Woman want-also this. We both try-now get supporters for later.’
‘And knowing Sibyl gives you prestige and more support?’
Water Woman caught the edge of her red scarf twixt thumb and forefinger and twisted the cloth back and forth. The blue spiral pin caught the light and s
himmered. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘This be the other reason Herbgather Woman take hostages. I owe-now you apology, Zayn Recaller. I think-never she take anyone hostage, whether that be your friends or someone else. She be a violent woman. She want-now kill all birds, she steal people on roads, she make a very bad Great Mother.’
‘It sounds like it,’ Loy said. ‘Can’t you convince the other Chof of that without using your friendship with Sibyl?’
‘Maybe so, maybe not.’ Water Woman let go the scarf. ‘There be-also the question of magic things. Sibyl want-not to give them to anyone who ask.’
‘Meaning, you get to dole them out and get more support that way?’
Water Woman raised her massive head up high and rumbled, loudly this time. Petite Loy scrambled up to stand on tip-toe and rumble right back. All at once Water Woman stamped a forefoot and lowered her head; Loy laughed pleasantly and sat back down.
‘Much too smart,’ Water Woman said.
‘No, just reasoning from past experience,’ Loy said. ‘We have something called elections in the Cantons.’
‘But Herbgather Woman, she dig-always for things to trade. She make-always her servants dig, too. She get-often many things in Shairb, but she give none away, give-not even to her servants, they who dig with her. She keep everything for herself. This benot the Chof way. We true Chiri Michi, when we get treasures or trade goods, we give most of them away. If we give-not, the true Chur, they have-never anything to give to their followers, our spear servants.’
‘Do you think she’s saving them up?’
‘Till the Great Mother die, yes.’
‘While you distribute gifts to your followers now.’
‘It pay to be prudent. Though I pray-always to all our gods that our beloved Great Mother live a long long life, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Loy said. ‘I think I’m beginning to understand a number of things now.’
Events were beginning to make sense for Zayn as well. The mayor in Shairb must have had some business arrangement with Herbgather Woman, profitable enough for him to help her with her long-term politicking. When an important possible hostage like Jezro Khan had ridden his way, the mayor had notified her somehow. Some of her supporters must have been waiting nearby for just such a chance.