“Mountains you cannot see from here,” said Talmadge. “I’ll leave about midsummer’s day, but I’ll be in good fortune to get to the lower mountain trails before the end of Octenbrough.”
That brought a snort and a head shake. “A month and a half if you’re lucky?”
Talmadge shrugged.
“Mountains as tall as those splitting Vanguard from Alpinador?” the large man asked.
Again, Talmadge shrugged. “I’ve never been to those, nor to Vanguard, nor even over the mountains that mark the rim of the Wilderlands. But those mountains are as far to the east from here as I am walking west.”
The big man chuckled and looked about the gigantic tent of the Matinee, the yearly spring gathering of the women and men who roamed the western wilds, hunting and trading, and here trading stories of the long winter, speaking rumors of those who weren’t there, or of those who had gone back to the east to more civilized lands, or of those who had passed on from this life. He pointed to one handsome and sturdy young woman, nodded his head, and pointed to Talmadge.
“You should be taking that one along for company,” he said.
“I take no one for company.” Talmadge’s face turned stern as he said that. In the eight years since the Badger incident, he had steadfastly refused any requests to accompany him on his now-fabled annual and arduous footslog.
“Better ’n curlin’ up with a bear!” the shaggy man wheezed.
Talmadge lifted his cup of foamy ale and gave a nod, even though he had no intention of making any exceptions, man or woman. He’d have enough of the company of his peers over the next couple of months, roaming the trails, hunting, trading and bartering, collecting trinkets he thought might be of interest to the lakemen of Loch Beag, a market that was exclusively his own to exploit. The other nomadic traders of the frontier couldn’t get enough of the pearls Talmadge brought back from the tribes. Many would pocket the pearls they had traded for this very week at Matinee and rush to the east, to the outskirts of Honce-the-Bear, and there profit handsomely.
The shaggy trader downed his ale and stumbled toward the kegs for some more, and Talmadge was glad to be rid of him, and of the stench of his breath. He glanced again at the woman the big man had indicated, and lifted his mug in toast as she met his gaze. He wouldn’t take her with him—and she probably wouldn’t want to go, for few would and most thought Talmadge crazy for making the dangerous trek year after year.
But he wasn’t leaving before midsummer, and perhaps a bit of womanly company would do him good. She certainly didn’t seem put off by his apparent interest, so perhaps it was time to make that interest more obvious.
* * *
“Khotai Tsentsen,” Talmadge echoed. “That is an interesting name.”
“Perhaps I am an interesting woman,” Khotai replied with a grin.
Talmadge nodded, not about to disagree. Khotai Tsentsen was taller than most of the men at Matinee, and there was nothing scrawny about her arms and shoulders, her muscles solid and imposing beyond the limits of her sleeveless, and quite revealing, vest. Her long hair was dark, her small eyes dark, her face round and flat, and strangely inviting. Talmadge had never seen anyone who looked quite like her, and he was sure she had never before been at Matinee in those weeks he had attended the festival.
This woman, he would not have forgotten.
“How long have you been hunting the frontier?” he asked.
“I’m not, really,” she replied, placing her forearms on the back of a chair and leaning forward toward Talmadge. “I only come to Matinee, to see what I can bring back to my village.”
Talmadge cocked his head, intrigued.
“Beyond the southern mountains, in the foothills on the south face,” she explained.
“The steppes?”
“To-gai, yes.”
“You are To-gai-ru?” Talmadge asked, trying unsuccessfully to hide his surprise. There were some To-gai-ru, the famed and ferocious horsemen of the steppes, at Matinee year after year, but Talmadge hadn’t considered that. Now that Khotai had mentioned it, though, he could see the similarities, particularly in the woman’s ruddy coloring and the shape of her face.
“A bit,” she answered. “My father is. My mother is half of Behren and half of Alpinador.”
“What?” Talmadge blurted before he could find the sense to hold his tongue, and he silently cursed those last two mugs of ale as perhaps two too many.
But Khotai laughed happily, obviously taking no offense. “A strange mix, aye,” she said. “My grandfather was a pirate—he probably still is!”
“So you hail from the frozen north, the eastern deserts, and the southern steppes, yet speak the language of the central kingdom of Honce-the-Bear as well as I?”
“All points blended into the middle?” she asked, and Talmadge laughed and lifted his mug, but only took a sip. He didn’t want to be especially drunk right now.
“I speak To-gai-ru,” she said, and translated it to, “Hind hoc Vinyar. And Behrenese, shon-ton hais Seeah.” She narrowed her eyes, painted on a wicked little grin, and lowered her voice to add, “Brid bol dah, Alpinadoran.
“Jaggar til’din sang,” she said in a husky voice, and though Talmadge spoke not a word of the barbarian language, and so did not understand, with her inflection and suggestive body language, he surely understood her meaning!
Before he could reconsider, he brought his ale to his lips and swallowed the whole of it in one great gulp.
He was fumbling in his thoughts for how he might accept the invitation, if that’s what it was, and he was pretty certain that it was, when a cry erupted over at the far side of the gigantic tent.
“Redshanks!” more than one, more than ten, voices raised.
Both Talmadge and Khotai turned about to see the man, and both couldn’t help but smile. Redshanks was known, by name at least, to everyone on the frontier, with tall tales of his godlike exploits growing taller at every Matinee. He had lived with bears, danced with wolves, worn living leopards as scarves, sucked the poison out of a mountain viper’s fangs, dulled the hats of powries, castrated giants with his teeth, caught lightning and thrown it back and yelled louder than the thunder for good measure!
He could outspit, outfight, outlaugh, outsing, outdance, outrun, outclimb, outswim, outhunt, outfish, and outswive any man or woman alive, and those were his least achievements.
He came into the big tent dancing a quick-legged jig, wearing his trademark kilt and bright red knee-stockings, to match his red beret—a powrie’s own bloody cap, no less! All the people nearest rushed to share their flagons with him, wanting the honor of having Redshanks himself drinking from their cups.
Talmadge watched it all with a widening grin as Redshanks the legend took control of the festivities in the great tent.
“You know him?” Khotai asked, jarring the lanky frontiersman from the spectacle.
“Redshanks? No. I’ve seen him a couple of times, years ago, but never more than from afar.”
“He’s not been to Matinee in several years,” said Khotai. “But he’s been about the mountains in the south.” She turned a sly eye to Talmadge. “Would you like to meet him?”
“You know him?”
“Very well,” she replied, and in a way that brought a twinge of jealousy to Talmadge, surprising him.
As if to prove her point, Redshanks came bounding over then. He took Khotai by the arm and swung her about, the two launching into a spinning and dipping dance as smoothly as if they’d been practicing together for years.
The crowd cheered and took up a song, and by the time the couple had finished, Khotai’s forehead was wet with perspiration. The much older Redshanks, though, seemed barely winded.
After the bows and final cheers, Khotai wouldn’t let go of the man’s hand, and dragged him over to Talmadge.
“My old friend, this is…” She paused and looked at the lanky frontiersman curiously.
“Talmadge,” Talmadge blurted, realizing that he hadn’t
yet gotten around to telling Khotai his name.
“He’s to blame for the—” Khotai started.
“The pearls,” Redshanks said. “Aye, the pearls!”
Talmadge could hardly catch his breath, overwhelmed that this legend knew anything at all about him.
“I’m off for a drink,” said Khotai.
“Make it three, then,” Redshanks bade her. “Tell ’em one’s for me and get yourself a better price!”
He turned right back to Talmadge. “Your pearls have found their way along the roads to Honce,” he said.
“Forgive my confusion, sir, but I don’t remember ever trading them with you, or anything with you.”
“They find their way to my purse anyway,” Redshanks explained, “from them who’re not going far enough to the east to make good use of the things. Too few folk in the Wilderlands to put so many of the gems in there. So I get ’em, and cheap, but hey, I’m not selling them cheap in Palmaris and Ursal!”
Talmadge’s eyes sparkled. Palmaris and Ursal, the two largest cities in the kingdom of Honce-the-Bear, with more people in either than he had ever seen in his life, likely!
“Where’re you from, Mister Talmadge?”
“You wouldn’t know it.”
“Try me.”
Talmadge had to spend a moment composing himself. His former home was not a name he often spoke, nor even recalled, for with it always came the pain of watching his family wither and die.
“It was called Westhaven,” he said somberly.
Redshanks seemed to deflate a bit, and issued an audible sigh. “The rosie plague,” he said quietly.
Talmadge stared at him, caught by surprise. Westhaven was little more than a tiny hamlet on the western edge of the westernmost forest of the Wilderlands. In his childhood and early teenage years living there, Talmadge had seen no more than a handful of visitors, if that.
He gave a slight nod.
“You’re one o’ the few from that doomed place still living, would be my guess,” said Redshanks.
Talmadge nodded again, and was glad when Khotai returned with the three flagons. She handed them out and led a toast.
“You must have been but a boy,” Redshanks remarked.
“A very young man,” Talmadge answered to the old frontiersman’s nod.
“What?” asked Khotai.
“You’ve been out here ever since?”
“Just a few months longer than my time in Westhaven,” Talmadge replied.
“What?” Khotai asked again.
“Wasn’t a choice, then, but just the way you walked,” said Redshanks.
Talmadge nodded and Khotai shied back a bit and quieted—no doubt from the somber look on his face, Talmadge thought.
“Do you miss it?”
He kept nodding.
“I’ll be going back that way when this damned party’s over,” Redshanks said. “Road’s wide enough for two.” He paused and offered a wide smile at Khotai. “For three, even.”
Talmadge shook his head.
“You can, you know,” said Redshanks. “The plague’s long gone now—gone a decade and more. And there’s so much fightin’ and dyin’ over in Honce that none’re bothering to look to the western lands. Things’re troubled in Ursal in God’s’Year 847, aye, and troubled times are profitable times for a young man with good wits.”
“How would you know my wits?”
“Still alive, ain’t you? Aye, alive and finding your way to Fireach Speuer, and not many can do that and come back, eh?”
Talmadge’s jaw drooped open in surprise. How could he know that detail?
“You think old Redshanks hadn’t got himself a few of those pearls on his own?” Redshanks answered before Talmadge could ask. The older man—and he had to be at least sixty, Talmadge thought, and maybe closer to eighty—laughed. “I knew the eight tribes before you knew how to open your eyes! Of course, there were eleven tribes then, but we both know the dangers there, eh?”
Talmadge nodded.
Across the room, someone called out for a Redshanks dance.
“Think about it,” Redshanks offered, and he gave a slight bow to Talmadge and moved off to greet some other old acquaintances.
The unexpected honor he had just been paid, along with the startling information, had Talmadge feeling as if a slight breeze would knock him to the floor. He closed his eyes and tried to replay that surreal conversation. He didn’t have to think about Redshanks’s offer, though, for returning to the east wasn’t a new proposition to him. In the year after the death of Badger, Talmadge had learned that Honce-the-Bear had become peaceful and prosperous and by all accounts civilized under the guidance of good King Danube and good Queen Jilseponie. Certainly that would have been the perfect time for Talmadge to go home, or to find a new home in the easier lands to the east.
But Talmadge wasn’t out here in the dangerous wilds because of any crime that had gotten him chased out, like many of those around him, but because he felt pressed in by large gatherings of people. Even here in Matinee, he was pushing his emotional limits, and so couldn’t wait to be back on the trail.
“So where are you going, then?” Khotai asked, drawing him from his contemplations.
“What?” he replied, but then added, “To the west, as soon as I’ve done some trading, that I can gather supplies and goods.”
“Alone?”
Talmadge started to respond, but the tone of her voice stopped him, sounding very much as if she was offering to go along. Or maybe not quite that, but surely there was a hint in there, as in her eyes as she stared into his, as in her inviting smile.
“What about him?” Talmadge asked, regretting the jealous question as soon as the words slipped past his lips.
“Who? Redshanks?” Khotai said with a lighthearted laugh, and she turned to regard the man.
“You two seemed quite friendly.”
“He’s a bit old, but I’d be a liar if I told you I wasn’t ever interested.”
“Then why not?”
Khotai laughed again. “Redshanks isn’t interested in ladies beyond dancing,” she answered.
Talmadge’s face twisted with confusion and surprise. “But his reputation…”
“Mostly earned and mostly true,” Khotai said. “Mostly.”
Talmadge drank his ale in one great gulp. He simply couldn’t help it.
“I wouldn’t mind a few more dances,” Khotai offered.
“I … I don’t…”
“Oh by the truth of the winter wind you do!” she said, and grabbed his hand and dragged him out for a twirl, and before Talmadge could pull away, the room erupted in song once more, led, loudest of all (of course), by Redshanks, who did indeed have a marvelous singing voice, to no one’s surprise.
Truly, it was the best Matinee Talmadge had ever enjoyed, and over the next few weeks, he got to know Khotai very well, and realized that the initial promise of, and attraction to, the woman was nothing compared to the truth of her.
Still, when he set out for the west on midsummer’s day, he walked alone.
Bits of the thick rope he had used to hang Badger from the tree were still there, he knew, and he’d see that grim reminder when he passed—and could probably even find the bones of the man below if he decided to look.
Even though he had come to yearn for this unusual and formidable woman who lived in To-gai, Talmadge wanted more to keep the winds of Loch Beag separate and solitary, his personal refuge from all the ugliness of the “civilized” world.
7
HUNT
“I know what you plan,” Innevah said, sweeping through some tangled branches to find a young couple huddled in a pine tree-cave in the slave barracks. The two stared at her wide-eyed. These two, a young woman of fifteen years and a boy nearing manhood, had been slaves to the Usgar longer than the eight years of Innevah’s indenture. They were not from Innevah’s village, evidenced by the double-humped shape of their heads, the wrapping practice more common in the westernmost village
of Car Seileach and in the easternmost settlement of Sellad Tulach.
The boy held up his hands helplessly, his expression quite panicked, but the young woman merely smiled disarmingly. “What we plan?” she asked.
“You are running,” Innevah flatly stated.
“That would be foolish,” said the young woman, as the boy issued a small whimper. “Where would we go?”
Innevah sighed and looked behind her, even poked her head up and out from the overlapping branches to ensure that no one else was about.
“I do not blame you. I’ll not dissuade you,” she said when she came fully into the natural chamber once more. She looked at the young woman with deep sympathy and said, “You were visited.”
The woman’s face twitched—truly she seemed just a frightened girl at that moment—and she seemed to be holding back tears.
“We are not running,” the boy blurted. “We’re not that stupid! Only your own son is that—”
“Shh!” the young woman chided, slugging him on the back of his shoulder.
“I do not blame you,” Innevah said again, calmly and evenly. She wasn’t upset that the boy thought Thump stupid, of course. She could only hope the Usgar believed it as well, for that ruse was her dear child’s only chance to survive!
“And I will help,” Innevah promised.
“You wish to come?” the boy said, his tone somewhere between terrified and hopeful.
Innevah laughed sadly and shook her head. “I am visited every day and every night,” she explained. “You’d not get much of a lead on our captors were I to go.” She looked at the young woman, the girl, with deepest sympathy at the reminder that this one, too, would soon enough suffer such a fate as Innevah. Only one warrior had taken this young woman, a mere girl, thus far, but word would soon enough spread among the savage, insatiable Usgar demons.
“What is your name?” Innevah asked the woman. “Sandashae, I have heard.”
The woman nodded. “He is Dunen Bloch. We are from Sellad Tulach, above the low desert.”
Innevah nodded. “You should not try to get there, not straightaway. Go straight down the mountain, to Fasach Crann, my village. If you can get among the huts, use my name. Remind them that I was the wife of Huana’kal. Tell them you have come with my blessing. My people will protect you.”