Blackdog (32 page)

“I was afraid…” he said. “’Rusha, I was afraid he would kill them, if they refused him oaths. That's why I tried to stop you going.”

“He didn't even ask them!”

“I know. But ‘Rusha, at least you were there. You saw them stand. You'll remember. We all will, but you'll
know
, they were true to the end. You stood there with them, and they knew you came for that, to be with them, to remember. The war only begins, and when the goddesses return like the sister says, Tamghat will learn how true we are.”

She sat back on her heels and leaned her head on her father's shoulder, saying nothing.

“Koneh went out, too,” Ghiziam said quietly. “He says the Lake-Lord brought the heads of all the great family folk who were killed in the first attacks, and piled them in the spring?”

Jerusha nodded wearily. “He said they're to stay there, so we remember.”

Mooshka smiled, a corpse's grin. “So we will.”

“He's set some spell on the…the heads. Even the flies won't touch them.”

“They won't walk,” Ghiziam said. “Not if their bodies are buried.”

“They will be,” Mooshka assured her. “Even a monster like Tamghat would be afraid of that many angry ghosts.”

Attavaia doubted it. But he had buried the bodies of the hostages from Ishkul Valley. It was only heads he cared about, for his trophies.

“Sister,” Mooshka said, and Attavaia looked up. “We've your turquoise, still, Sister. You'll want to take that home with you, I expect.”

Such an odd moment to mention that. Attavaia wondered why. As though he thought she might want to abandon them, dissolve the weak alliance they had made.

“You keep it. Use it against him, somehow.”

Mooshka looked grimly satisfied, and nodded. “I'll see what I can do. I've been thinking, I might know someone, brings blades down from Varrgash quite often. And ’Rusha knows the way up to your ‘Auntie’ Orillias?”

“Yes,” Jerusha said, with a return of her old fierceness, scrubbing her eyes with a fist.

“So we'll carry on and let Treyan go to the gods knowing so. When's your goddess coming home?”

“Years yet.”

“Gives us time to be ready.”

“It does that.”

“She's a powerful goddess, your Attalissa. She'll avenge our Sera?”

Attavaia bit her lip. “She'll return,” she said. “They both will.”

And she pushed away that traitor thought, the one that lurked beneath all she did, the one she had never shared even with Enneas. The one that wondered what Attalissa could do against Tamghat, even once she was a woman, even once she was fully the goddess again. Because Tamghat, so the story went around—whispered in the town, whispered among the free sisters, rumour leaking out of the temple—Tamghat had not come to Lissavakail expecting a child. He had come prepared to face the goddess grown and in her full power.

“She'll return,” she repeated.

Jerusha gave her a long, considering look. Attavaia met it, held it when it would have dropped to the cushions and the stone that the girl knew they slept on, every night.

“A
nd now you've gone and gotten yourself lost. Well done, ‘Vaia.”

Attavaia reined the dun pony in, considering. To her right, the south, a near-vertical climb of loose scree rose. To the left was a dry streambed, bottomed with larger slabs of the same loose stone, most angled towards the sky, like a bed of miniature mountain peaks. Then, rising, hummocks of broken rock, pillars and mounds of it, and beyond that, another great swell of grey land. Ahead, where she had thought her path led, the world dropped away, and rose distantly beyond into misty blue heights. The path twisted before her, dropped too steeply for a pony to follow. A wild-sheep track, nothing more. The valley below was no mountain meadow but one of the great ice fields, a blue-white emptiness of wind and deadly crevasses, and a winter-cold air striking up from it. Clearly she should have struck south before now, to wind her way to Narvabarkash, and with luck and Attalissa's blessing, the mines to which she should consign Sera's sandstone tomb. She tried not to let worry run too far ahead, trusting that once she reached the village, she could find a trustworthy guide. The god's holy place was a day's journey from the village of Narvabarkash itself, and the directions seemed vague.

“Should have taken the main track after all, and given up on going armed.”

Talking to oneself was a sign of madness. She'd be right at home among the priests of Narva, who endured their god's oracles, so it was said, living on the high peak in the god's own caves, touched by his strange and wandering mind with holy madness. Though others said the line of priests had died out long ago, and there were no shrines, no sacred caves, any longer, only the mines and the mining village of Narvabarkash, which did not sit on the slopes of Narva's actual mountaintop, but at the foot of a lesser peak, facing up to the actual heights where Narva had once walked.

The present avatar of the goddess had been born in an outlying hamlet on the skirts of the Narvabarkash. A sign, maybe, that they could place hope in Narvabarkash? Attavaia did not even know which tiny settlement it was that Attalissa had been born to. It was not supposed to matter. They were all Attalissa's, now.

When Attavaia was a child, she had loved the stories Enneas's Narvabarkashi mother told, of the dangerous, twisting wormholes into the mountains that were the fabled turquoise mines, richer and deeper than any others within Lissavakail's territory. They were tales to make your skin crawl, in the firelit evenings: foolish children lost forever, lured by enchanted singing and unable to find their way back to the light, silver-scaled demons and sudden secret pools and the brooding god, whose caves echoed with whispers and the sound of slow breathing.

Stories for children. Not something to take any more seriously than Enneas's caution against the god's handsome priests.

At least if Enni believed there were priests who still called themselves such, and that she had seen them while visiting her mother's kin, there were probably priests.

“Not that it looks like I'm going to find them,” Attavaia growled. The pony laid its ears back at her tone.

She had lost her way amid the stones, taken the wrong turning of this obscure hunters’ trail, which she followed to avoid the Tamghati-patrolled traders’ track. Attavaia stared about her, chewing her lip. No going on ahead, that was certain.

Great Gods, but her leg hurt, and tears of exhaustion suddenly prickled at her eyelids. Stupid. It only meant retracing her steps, watching for the path she must have missed. But she was weak, and injured, and weary. It had been a month before Master Mooshka had given in and made arrangements to get her as far as Auntie Orillias’ place, longer still lying up there, and later at Shevehan the smith's, with the weight of Sera's stone on her mind. She should still be in bed, but maybe it was some lingering touch of the desert goddess driving her, that she could not rest till she had done as Sera had bidden her. Shevehan had argued…but here she was, and she couldn't give up and crawl back to bed now. No bed up here to crawl to, anyway. Nothing to do but go on, with yet another night on the ground to look forward to, if she didn't come to Narvabarkash before dusk. Attavaia forced the reluctant pony to turn. It seemed to have decided the trail's ending meant the day's ending, though it was only a little after noon.

“No such luck,” she told it.

She was above the tree line here, the near world grey and faded brown and bleak, the distance smoky blue, and the wind making her wish she had dug the mittens out of her pack that morning, and taken out her second shawl as well, to cover her felt cap, in addition to the one she wore swathed over her jacket. Neither the harsh, open land nor the wind improved her mood, though they had their own beauty. There would be snow, within days, and she might find herself trapped for the winter in Narvabarkash. Better that than lost in the wilds when the first storm hit, but she'd rather be back at Sister Orillias’, or in the smith's hidden loft.

The pony flung up its head, nostrils flaring, and whinnied.

She had time to curse and drag her voluminous shawl more securely to cover her sword, the Northron sax on its baldric, which dragged less at her hips than her own sword would have done, less strain on her leg. The answering whinny was abruptly silenced. She imagined a brutal hand jerking at the bit. No Lissavakaili hunter—unless he too imagined mercenaries.

No place to hide, or run. Attavaia went on, the pony showing an inclination to trot which she firmly quashed. Around a high shoulder of stone. They were waiting there, wary as she, but that alertness slackened into amusement at the sight of her. Two young Grasslander men on mountain ponies, a brace of hare swinging at one's knee, and the other with a string of partridges.

Both had bows, neither strung, and neither wore armour, though both had sword and the Grasslander round buckler.

“’s keep you, my lords,” she muttered, head down. She couldn't quite bring herself to say “the gods.” She kicked the pony with her good foot, trying to guide it to the edge of the trail. It wanted to stop and gossip.

The older of the two men, whose face bore the scars of Tamghat's bear cult, stayed her with a hand on her bridle.

“Hold on, girl. Where are you off to?”

Attavaia kept her eyes lowered, let the mountain accent slide further into the rapid, high-vowelled speech of the remote valleys. “Back home, sirs.”

“What village?”

“Lumbiet, sirs. Over the road.” Lumbiet was a good day's ride, she thought, and beyond the main track to Narvabarkash. They wouldn't ride so far, please Attalissa, to check her story.

“So you can tell us where the damned road is,” the younger said. “Good girl.”

The older man frowned. “What are you doing so far from home?”

“Collecting herbs,” she mumbled, properly abashed. “There's a dyer's-wort grows up by the ice field, better than anything we've got home for a good lasting red.”

“Not the damned ice field again.” The younger man laughed. “Hells, every damned trail we try ends up there. You'll have to lead us out, girl.”

She gave him a quick, nervous smile. “Sirs, you just go straight on this track westerly, and you'll find the road again. I don't travel so fast, you don't want me slowing you.”

“Slow's fine, if the company's worth having,” the younger man said. “Eh, Rying?”

The scarred man drew his knife and slashed the thong holding her nearest saddlebag closed, flicked the flap up. “Herbs?” he asked. “Peasants don't need to go so far for their cursed weeds. Why d'you think we patrol the damned tracks, Nar-Asmin? More likely she's running gold out to the Serakallashi.”

He took the sack of millet she'd been cooking for supper and breakfast, tossed it to Nar-Asmin, who hefted it in his hand, shook his head, and tossed it back at Attavaia. She dropped the reins and caught it left-handed. Oh, mistake, she should not so obviously have kept her sword-hand free. They didn't seem to notice. Didn't notice the leg, either, which should have excited comment. Even beneath her full skirt and petticoats it stuck out awkwardly, though the splints and bandaging were hidden.

“No luck there for you, Rying, too light to be anything but grain. Leave her alone. We want to get out of this, don't we?” He shrugged, for Attavaia's benefit. “My brother, the great tracker. Let's go hunting, he said. Let's head up into the real mountains, he said.” Nar-Asmin smiled again. “What's your name?”

“Leave off,” Rying said. “Who cares? She's got a face like sour milk, and she's a cripple besides. Weeds!” He flung a fistful of roots away. Common madder, but she carried it for just such an excuse.

“He's embarrassed at getting us lost,” Nar-Asmin confided. “Don't mind him, he's always like this.”

A nudge of her heel made the pony shuffle its rump away. Rying's rummaging put him too close to her barely cloaked sword, and the Great Gods only knew what they'd make of the heavy chunk of sandstone at the bottom of the pack. Nar-Asmin caught her pony's reins, gave her another possessive smile. “We can offer you a better supper than millet porridge, anyway.” And it wouldn't stop with supper, she could see that in the mocking set of his lips, all arrogant ownership and a hunger she wasn't used to facing. It wasn't her, any poor girl would do, when this one was out hunting. And Rying was bored with it and impatient, turning his pony away.

“Straight ahead, you say? Come on, then, woman. We can have a better look through her gear when we camp,” he added to his brother. Snickered. “Might have gold tucked in those skirts, thinking she can look all meek and sickly and play for mercy if she meets a patrol. No one'd really send a cripple out hunting weeds.”

“You think I should search her?” Nar-Asmin pulled wide, innocent eyes, and then winked at her. “He has a nasty, suspicious mind, doesn't he, darling?” He tugged at her pony's head and it suddenly, fool beast, decided it did not like the company after all. Flung up its head and shied, taking the Grasslander by surprise. Attavaia grabbed her momentarily free reins, shawl flying, kicked the pony—and Rying shouted, “She's armed!” and wheeled his mount. It heaved into hers, squealing, hers snapped at it…she ducked Rying's swinging blade and drew the sax, slashed as he hastily backed away, turned to swing at Nar-Asmin, caught him across his neck. Even as he gaped and wheezed she thought she heard the familiar shushing whine by her ear, the sound of her dreams, the pull and release of the bowstring and the song of the fleeing arrow. She lay low and shouted the pony into bolting free of the tangle. She looked back then.