Blade Kin (18 page)

Chapter 27: A Humbling Darkness

For most of the day, Fava and Darrissea raced through the forest above Smilodon Bay, gaining altitude. The snow here was deeper, and no rains had come to melt it, but new snow was falling, covering their tracks.

Twice they came upon the tracks of Blade Kin, parties of half a dozen each, heading south. Both women feared walking on any established road after a few hours, so they set off through the forest, slogging through the deep redwoods, where the forest floor was not packed with snow.

They set camp in early afternoon, in a thicket of chest-high swordtail ferns. A redwood had fallen, leaving its torn roots standing fifty feet in the air. The roots provided shelter, creating something of a cave, while a slab of bark served as a roof.

Fava woke in the morning to the sound of Darrissea snoring in her ear. It was an odd sound, one she’d seldom heard so close before, having been raised in a household of Pwi.

She thought it odd that humans snorted like pigs in their sleep. But then humans were strange. They got rich, while the Pwi remained poor. They had clever little hands that could sew and build machines, while the Pwi had big paws that could dig holes and swing an ax. Their ancestors had lived among the stars, and even if they were a fallen people and could not battle the red drones that orbited above, they had achieved far more than the Neanderthals. But how much had they really achieved? They still snorted like pigs in their sleep.

Fava studied a movement uphill, snow dropping from a vine maple. The world consisted of dark stripes of redwood boles against the stark white of snow. Where the trees were thin, snow lay everywhere, yet it was melting even as she watched. The kwea of the day reminded her of times frolicking in the snow with her father and brothers during the winter moose hunt.

Darrissea woke and sat next to Fava, and Darrissea decided to comb her hair.

Uphill, a jay flew from its maple leaf, squawking. “Don’t move,” Fava said.

A bull elk whistled someplace nearby, the frantic call of the rut. Then Fava heard men—creeping through the thick brush. She lowered her head slowly, to keep from arousing attention, and watched six Blade Kin pass fifty yards to the west. They were all searching the ground, looking for footprints. Fava waited for them to pass.

Half an hour after they were gone, Fava whispered. “While we are in the woods, don’t brush your hair. If anyone comes near, they will spot your movements instantly. If you want to care for your hair, do so at night.

“Make sure to tie a green cloth around your hair when you are done, so that its color does not betray you in the woods.”

Darrissea nodded.

Fava whispered, “We keep seeing Blade Kin. Do you think those men are hunting for us?”

“No,” Darrissea said after a moment. “I think they were just hunting refugees, anyone. At the loft, I covered the Blade Kin I killed with hay. I suspect that the bodies won’t be found for a few days.”

Fava moved only her eyes as she watched the forest. When she had to turn her head, she did so slowly. No sudden moves, nothing to attract attention.

Fava had hunted giant elk in the forest, the megalodon’s. She’d watched the way they flicked their tails or ears to communicate.

When she had hunted with her brothers, such movements gave them away.

Darrissea mimicked Fava, moved slowly.

“Those Blade Kin may have come from Gate of the Gods.” Darrissea said. “I suspect that they’ll have the gate well guarded. We will have to go over the wall.”

“Hmmm …” Fava said, without nodding.

“I have to say, I admire the way you are handling this,” Darrissea said. “By the time we get to Bashevgo, your ear will be healed. You will look the part of a Blade Kin, though that will not be enough to pass among them. I can teach you some of their ways.

“Blade Kin use the same tactics, over and over. I suspected they would pass through town again a couple days after the attack, just as I suspect that they will come through about two weeks from now, and then again near the end of summer.

“As for these woods, they will scour them for another day, always following a north-south pattern. The men we saw will come back this evening, following the same path, searching for footprints of travelers going east or west—any such tracks will not be from Blade Kin.”

“How do you know all this?”

Darrissea answered, “My father lived among the Blade Kin for years before they killed him. He said that ‘You cannot conquer an enemy that you do not know.’

“He used to tell me these things on his trips home. I thought they were just stories as a kid, but when I grew older, I recognized the value of what he told me. I guess—perhaps he was preparing me. I think he knew this day would come.” Darrissea wrinkled her brow.

She thought a moment, then continued, “In their camps at night, a Blade Kin party of sixteen or more men will always post four guards, one at each corner, about a hundred yards out. Smaller parties, if they camp in the open, will post two guards. If they camp in a building, they will post only one watchman at the open door. They will always bar any extra doors from inside rather than post a second guard.”

“That seems stupid,” Fava said. “They are so predictable.”

“No more or less predictable than we are,” Darrissea said. “They come back to towns after an attack because they know that refugees will congregate there. Even if a whole town is wiped out down to the last man, any escapee will return.

“First he will grab a few necessities, cart them off, and try to survive in the hills. Then he will come back a few weeks later to slaughter and farm animals left behind, and he will think he is safe because the town seems empty. Eventually, he will plant a garden back in town where the land has been cleared and tilled, where the soil is proven, someplace where a comfortable house has been left standing after the attack.”

Fava raised her eyebrows. “Like my house?”

“Yes, yours was the trap house. It was off the road, in the brush. The Blade Kin knew that any refugees from town would want it because it is out of the way, because it offers a good view of the bay.

“In the same way, the Blade Kin know that a scared Pwi will usually not run on the road. He will sneak through the brush on one side of the road, perhaps a hundred yards out, the way a deer or a bear skirts a road. So the Blade Kin march north and south, paying particular attention to tracks just off the roadside.

“Now that the Blade Kin have passed us heading south, we should leave soon, walk parallel to their trail and head north. They may not see our tracks.”

Darrissea fell silent, and Fava wished that she would continue speaking, tell her everything that there was to know about the Blade Kin. Fava felt safe with the girl. Yet there was tension in Darrissea’s voice, the sound of words unsaid. “What more should I know of the Blade Kin?”

A crow called in the distance, and Darrissea said, “You may look like the Blade Kin, and you can learn to follow their tactics, but in order to pass for one, you must act like them.

“Among their own, they strut and hold their heads up. The Blade Kin flaunt their sexual prowess and sleep with each other or with Thralls, raping Thralls if they must.

“But because they will think you are one of them, they must ask for your service. To refuse to mate or to pretend you are not interested is a breach of manners. I know that the idea of mating with them is abominable, but you must never let them see the disgust in your eyes or hear it in your voice.”

“Your father told you about this?” Fava asked, shocked.

“He told me a lot of unpleasant things,” Darrissea answered. “As I said, I guess maybe he was trying to prepare me. Some Blade Kin work extra hard to impress their superiors in bed. To appear unwilling to do the same, I think, would be a mistake.”

“I … I could never sleep with one of them.”

“Then you had better prepare your excuses now,” Darrissea said, and she fell silent.

Fava sat, trying to envision how she would excuse herself. She imagined looking at an officer’s codpiece. If the man was small in size or average, she would pretend that he could not satisfy her. If the man was well hung, she would tell him, “Go mate with a cow!”

Fava stifled the urge to laugh. The woods had fallen silent again except for the occasional plop of melting show dropping from branches.

Darrissea looked around cautiously and said, “Let’s go.”

They headed north alongside the Blade Kin’s trail. By mid-afternoon they found the Blade Kin’s camp by the great wall that encircled Smilodon Bay. The basalt wall seemed much taller than forty feet. Shaped by the power of the ancient Starfarers, the black stone appeared to be one piece, without a single handhold. They were only able to cross it by finding a place where poplars grew beside the wall in soggy ground. Beavers had chewed through a tree, and it had fallen so that it leaned against the wall. They climbed to the top of the wall, then walked along it west, looking for a place to drop down on the other side. The path on top of the rock was covered with detritus, the scattered redwood needles of a thousand years, layer upon layer of moss.

The woods were still and quiet, the unnatural silence one sometimes hears before a storm.

Fava kept glancing at the sky. Last night’s clouds had broken, but far away, to the north and west, she saw dragons circling, dozens of great-horned dragons. It set her teeth on edge, and she walked softly, cautiously, watching the forest on both sides of the wall.

The forest floor was a mess—great massive roots pulled in odd directions, the twisted remains of dead redwoods, a vast carpet laid down in layers—vine maples towering to forty feet, ferns and laurel below that, so that there were an endless number of obstructions to her view.

At any moment, Fava imagined that a Blade Kin scouting party would step out from behind a redwood, take aim with their guns and fire. There would be practically no way for Fava to defend herself, yet nowhere that she looked could she seem to find a way down.

If only they had a rope.

No jays called anywhere, no squirrels. Not even a sparrow chirped among the endless ferns and vine maples at the forest floor.

After nearly an hour, they came to a glade where the carcass of a giant sloth lay, surrounded by a camp of Mastodon Men.

The huge apelike men howled at the women and tossed stones and branches up at the wall. They formed a circle around their women and children, and a silver back male rushed to the wall grunting and baring his fangs, shaking his head in consternation when Fava and Darrissea would not answer his challenge.

Darrissea remained unconcerned, for the Mastodon Men had fed on the giant sloth.

The women passed the camp of the Mastodon Men, left them a mile behind and nearly reached the Gate of the Gods, and could not find a way down.

The woods remained quiet, an unnatural stillness, and then they crested a small hill and suddenly both of them heard it at once—a sound that made air tremble like distant thunder, that echoed through the black rock under their feet.

A mile away, through a small clearing in the trees, they could discern a moving wall of green, an army of Blade Kin marching through the Gate of the Gods toward the lands to the south.

Darrissea motioned for Fava to stop, to kneel behind in the shadow of ivy and some vine maples. They waited for four hours, and still the army continued to march past. Four columns of imperial mastodons went by, each followed by an army of more men than Fava had ever dreamed.

At nightfall, the army stopped to camp, and as the river of campfires appeared, Darrissea whispered,

“Ah how the humbling darkness

bends the knees of men

and stifles the cries of mundane beasts.

The pigeon whirls to its roost,

I to my bed,

The humbling darkness covers us all

So that living men sleep with dead.”

“I have not heard that poem before,” Fava said. “Whose is it?”

“Mine,” Darrissea admitted. “I just made it up. It is a habit. I am beginning to think in poems.”

“It’s a strange sickness,” Fava said. “I believe ten thousand men passed us this afternoon—more warriors than we have in all the Rough. I wouldn’t think that they need so many.”

“They don’t,” Darrissea answered. “The Blade Kin in town were the warriors of the Black Cyclops—troops under the command of Lord Tantos of Bashevgo. You can tell by the black eye sewn on their chests. Of the seven houses of lords, Lord Tantos’ has long been most powerful, and it is the first legion of the Black Cyclops that has battled the Hukm and the Okanjara to the west for the past eighty years.

“So these armies come from Bashevgo. None of these armies come from Craal.

“Under the forces of the Black Cyclops, I think that Lord Tantos hopes to tame the Rough in a summer, take control of the whole of it and set up a third empire, to vie with Craal and Bashevgo.”

“Do you think he will go to war with the others?” Fava asked.

High and clear they heard the sound of a man laughing hysterically, the voice of a Blade Kin. Darrissea cocked her head, listening for the source, until both women realized that the man was faraway, the sound only carried by a trick of acoustics.

“I don’t know. The Lords of Bashevgo fear Tantos. He owns a third of all the Blade Kin, two full legions. The other lords would enjoy seeing him scatter his forces by trying to hold the Rough. It will make them feel secure.

“As for Craal? The five lords there have more land than they know what to do with. They are so concerned with balancing their forces that none would want to risk a war with Tantos.

“My father used to warn me to never be fooled. He said it is not the Pwi’s valiant efforts, nor those of the Hukm or Okanjara that have kept the Rough free for so many centuries. The Slave Lords have long been so concerned with fighting among themselves that none dared turn his face our way—till now.”

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